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VOLUMES  OF  yERSE 
BY   ANDREW   LANG. 


HELEN   OF  TROY,     i  vol.  iimo ^1.50 

BALLADES  AND  VERSES  VAIN      ....       j.50 


^-JJTTERS 


TO 


DEAD  AUTHORS 


BY 


ANDREW   LANG 


NEW   YORK 
CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 
189 1 

All  rights  rese>-ved 


^ 


f\ 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge  : 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Ca 


CONTENTS. 


I.  To  W.  M.  Thackeray 
II.  To  Charles  Dickens    . 

III.  To  Pierre  de  Ronsard    . 

IV.  To  Herodotus 
V.  Epistle  to  Mr.  Alexander  Pope 

VI.  To  LuciAN  OF  Samosata 
VII.  To  MaJtre  Francoys  Rabelais 
VIII.  To  Jane  Austen     . 
IX.  To  Master  Isaak  Walton 
X.  To  M.  Chapelain  . 
XI.  To  Sir  John  Manndeville,  Kt 
XII.  To  Alexandre  Dumas 

XIII.  To  Theocritus 

XIV.  To  Edgar  Allan  Poe  . 
XV.  To  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Bart. 

XVI.  To  EUSEBIUS  OF  C/esarea     . 
XVII.  To  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley     . 
XVIII.  To  Monsieur  de  MoliMe,  Valet 
DE  Chambre  du  Roi 
XIX.  To  Robert  Burns     .        .        .        . 
XX.  To  Lord  Byron     .... 
XXI.  To  Omar  KhayyXm 
XXII.  To  Q.  Horatius  Flaccus   . 


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223 


LETTERS 


TO 


DEAD   AUTHORS. 


I. 

To  W.  Mi  Thackeray. 

Sir,  —  There  are  many  things  that 
stand  in  the  way  of  the  critic  when  he 
has  a  mind  to  praise  the  living.  He  may 
dread  the  charge  of  writing  rather  to 
vex  a  rival  than  to  exalt  the  subject  of 
his  applause.  He  shuns  the  appearance 
of  seeking  the  favour  of  the  famous,  and 
would  not  willingly  be  regarded  as  one 
of  the  many  parasites  who  now  advertise 
each  movement  and  action  of  contempo- 
rary genius.  '  Such  and  such  men  of  let- 
ters are  passing  their  summer  holidays 
in   the  Val  d'Aosta,'  or  the  Mountains 


2         LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

of  the  Moon,  or  the  Suliman  Range,  as 
it  may  happen.  So  reports  our  literary 
*  Court  Circular,'  and  all  our  Pricieuscs 
read  the  tidings  with  enthusiasm.  Lastly, 
if  the  critic  be  quite  new  to  the  world  of 
letters,  he  may  superfluously  fear  to  vex 
a  poet  or  a  novelist  by  the  abundance  of 
his  eulogy.  No  such  doubts  perplex  us 
when,  with  all  our  hearts,  we  would  com- 
mend the  departed  ;  for  they  have  passed 
almost  beyond  the  reach  even  of  envy ; 
and  to  those  pale  cheeks  of  theirs  no 
commendation  can  bring  the  red. 

You,  above  all  others,  were  and  re- 
main without  a  rival  in  your  many-sided 
excellence,  and  praise  of  you  strikes  at 
none  of  those  who  have  survived  your 
day.  The  increase  of  time  only  mellows 
your  renown,  and  each  year  that  passes 
and  brings  you  no  successor  does  but 
sharpen  the  keenness  of  our  sense  of 
loss.  In  what  other  novelist,  since  Scott 
was  worn  down  by  the  burden  of  a  for- 
lorn endeavour,  and  died  for  honour's 
sake,  has  the  wovld  found  so  many  of  the 


THACKERAY  3 

fairest  gifts  combined  ?  If  we  may  not 
call  you  a  poet  (for  the  first  of  English 
writers  of  light  verse  did  not  seek  that 
crown),  who  that  was  less  than  a  poet 
ever  saw  life  with  a  glance  so  keen  as 
yours,  so  steady,  and  so  sane  ?  Your 
pathos  was  never  cheap,  your  laughter 
never  forced  ;  your  sigh  was  never  the 
pulpit  trick  of  the  preacher.  Your  funny 
people — your  Costigans  and  Fokers  — 
were  not  mere  characters  of  trick  and 
catch-word,  were  not  empty  comic  masks. 
Behind  each  the  human  heart  was  beat- 
ing ;  and  ever  and  again  we  were  allowed 
to  see  the  features  of  the  man. 

Thus  fiction  in  your  hands  was  not 
simply  a  profession,  like  another,  but  a 
constant  reflection  of  the  whole  surface 
of  life  :  a  repeated  echo  of  its  laughter 
and  its  complaint.  Others  have  written, 
and  not  written  badly,  with  the  stolid 
professional  regularity  of  the  clerk  at 
his  desk ;  you,  like  the  Scholar  Gipsy, 
might  have  said  that  '  it  needs  heaven- 
sent moments  for  this  skill.'     There  are, 


4        LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

it  will  not  surprise  you,  some  honourable 
women  and  a  few  men  who  call  you  a 
cynic;  who  speak  of  'the  withered  world 
of  Thackerayan  satire  ; '  who  think  your 
eyes  were  ever  turned  to  the  sordid  as- 
pects of  life  —  to  the  mother-in-law  who 
threatens  to  *  take  away  her  silver  bread- 
basket ; '  to  the  intriguer,  the  sneak,  the 
termagant ;  to  the  Beckys,  and  Barnes 
Newcomes,  and  Mrs.  Mackenzies  of  this 
world.  The  quarrel  of  these  sentimen- 
talists is  really  with  life,  not  with  you  ; 
they  might  as  wisely  blame  Monsieur 
Buffon  because  there  are  snakes  in  his 
Natural  History.  Had  you  not  impaled 
certain  noxious  human  insects,  you  would 
have  better  pleased  Mr.  Ruskin ;  had 
you  confined  yourself  to  such  perform- 
ances, you  would  have  been  more  dear 
to  the  Neo-Balzacian  school  in  fiction. 

You  are  accused  of  never  having  drawn 
a  good  woman  who  was  not  a  doll,  but 
the  ladies  that  bring  this  charge  seldom 
remind  us  either  of  Lady  Castlewood  or 
of  Theo  or  Hetty  Lambert.     The  best 


THACKERAY  $ 

women  can  pardon  you  Becky  Sharp  and 
Blanche  Amory  ;  they  find  it  harder  to 
forgive  you  Emmy  Sedley  and  Helen 
Pendennis.  Yet  what  man  does  not 
know  in  his  heart  that  the  best  women 
—  God  bless  them  —  lean,  in  their  char- 
acters, either  to  the  sweet  passiveness  of 
Emmy  or  to  the  sensitive  and  jealous 
affections  of  Helen  ?  'T  is  Heaven,  not 
you,  that  made  them  so  ;  and  they  are 
easily  pardoned,  both  for  being  a  very 
little  lower  than  the  angels  and  for  their 
gentle  ambition  to  be  painted,  as  by 
Guido  or  Guercino,  with  wings  and  harps 
and  haloes.  So  ladies  have  occasionally 
seen  their  own  faces  in  the  glass  of  fancy, 
and,  thus  inspired,  have  drawn  Romola 
and  Consuelo.  Yet  when  these  fair  ideal- 
ists, Mdme.  Sand  and  George  Eliot,  de- 
signed Rosamund  Vincy  and  Horace, 
was  there  not  a  spice  of  malice  in  the 
portraits  which  we  miss  in  your  least 
favourable  studies  ? 

That    the  creator  of    Colonel    New- 
come    and    of    Henry    Esmond  was    a 


6        LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

snarling  cynic  ;  that  he  who  designed 
Rachel  Esmond  could  not  draw  a  good 
woman :  these  are  the  chief  charges  (all 
indifferent  now  to  you,  who  were  once 
so  sensitive)  that  your  admirers  have  to 
contend  against.  A  French  critic,  M. 
Taine,  also  protests  that  you  do  preach 
too  much.  Did  any  author  but  yourself 
so  frequently  break  the  thread  (seldom 
a  strong  thread)  of  his  plot  to  converse 
with  his  reader  and  moralise  his  tale,  we 
also  might  be  offended.  But  who  that 
loves  Montaigne  and  Pascal,  who  that 
likes  the  wise  trifling  of  the  one  and 
can  bear  with  the  melancholy  of  the 
other,  but  prefers  your  preaching  to 
another's  playing ! 

Your  thoughts  come  in,  like  the 
intervention  of  the  Greek  Chorus,  as  an 
ornament  and  source  of  fresh  delight. 
Like  the  songs  of  the  Chorus,  they  bid 
us  pause  a  moment  over  the  wider  laws 
and  actions  of  human  fate  and  human 
life,  and  we  turn  from  your  persons  to 
yourself,  and  again  from  yourself  to  your 


TH  ACKER  A  V  7 

persons,  as  from  the  odes  of  Sophocles 
or  Aristophanes  to  the  action  of  their 
characters  on  the  stage.  Nor,  to  my 
taste,  does  the  mere  music  and  melan- 
choly dignity  of  your  style  in  these 
passages  of  meditation  fall  far  below  the 
highest  efforts  of  poetry.  I  remember 
that  scene  where  Clive,  at  Barnes  New- 
come's  Lecture  on  the  Poetry  of  the 
Affections,  sees  Ethel  who  is  lost  to 
him.  'And  the  past  and  its  dear  his- 
tories, and  youth  and  its  hopes  and  pas- 
sions, and  tones  and  looks  for  ever 
echoing  in  the  heart  and  present  in  the 
memory  —  these,  no  doubt,  poor  Clive 
saw  and  heard  as  he  looked  across  the 
great  gulf  of  time,  and  parting  and 
grief,  and  beheld  the  woman  he  had 
loved  for  many  years.' 

For  ever  echoing  in  the  heart  and  pres- 
ent in  the  memory :  who  has  not  heard 
these  tones,  who  does  not  hear  them  as 
he  turns  over  your  books  that,  for  so 
many  years,  have  been  his  companions 
and  comforters  }     We  have  been  young 


8         LETTERS    TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

and  old,  we  have  been  sad  and  merry 
with  you,  we  have  listened  to  the  mid- 
night chimes  with  Pen  and  Warrington, 
have  stood  with  you  beside  the  death- 
bed, have  mourned  at  that  yet  more 
awful  funeral  of  lost  love,  and  with  you 
have  prayed  in  the  inmost  chapel  sacred 
to  our  old  and  immortal  affections,  a  Ual 
souvenir!  And  whenever  you  speak 
for  yourself,  and  speak  in  earnest,  how 
magical,  how  rare,  how  lonely  in  our 
literature  is  the  beauty  of  your  sen- 
tences !  '  I  can't  express  the  charm  of 
them  '  (so  you  write  of  George  Sand  ; 
so  we  may  write  of  you)  :  '  they  seem  to 
me  like  the  sound  of  country  bells,  pro- 
voking I  don't  know  what  vein  of  music 
and  meditation,  and  falling  sweetly  and 
sadly  on  the  ear.'  Surely  that  style,  so 
fresh,  so  rich,  so  full  of  surprises  —  that 
style  which  stamps  as  classical  your  frag- 
ments of  slang,  and  perpetually  aston- 
ishes and  delights  —  would  alone  give 
immortality  to  an  author,  even  had  he 
little  to  say.     But  you,  with  your  whole 


THACKERAY  9 

wide  world  of  fops  and  fools,  of  good 
women  and  brave  men,  of  honest  ab- 
surdities and  cheery  adventurers  :  you 
who  created  the  Steynes  and  Newcomes, 
the  Beckys  and  Blanches,  Captain  Costi- 
gan  and  F.  B.,  and  the  Chevalier  Strong 

—  all  that  host  of  friends  imperishable 

—  you  must  survive  with  Shakespeare 
and  Cervantes  in  the  memory  and  affec- 
tion of  men. 


II. 

To  Charles  Dickens. 

Sir,  —  It  has  been  said  that  every 
man  is  born  a  Platonist  or  an  Aristote- 
lian, though  the  enormous  majority  of 
us,  to  be  sure,  live  and  die  without  being 
conscious  of  any  invidious  philosophic 
partiality  whatever.  With  more  truth 
(though  that  does  not  imply  very  much) 
every  Englishman  who  reads  may  be 
said  to  be  a  partisan  of  yourself  or  of 
Mr.  Thackeray.  Why  should  there  be 
any  partisanship  in  the  matter ;  and 
why,  having  two  such  good  things  as 
your  novels  and  those  of  your  contem- 
porary, should  we  not  be  silently  happy 
in  the  possession  .-'  Well,  men  are  made 
so,  and  must  needs  fight  and  argue 
over  their  tastes  in  enjoyment.  For 
myself,  I  may  say  that  in  this  matter  I 


DICKENS  1 1 

am  what  the  Americans  do  not  call  a 
'  Mugwump,'  what  English  politicians 
dub  a  '  superior  person  '  —  that  is,  I 
take  no  side,  and  attempt  to  enjoy  the 
best  of  both. 

It  must  be  owned  that  this  attitude 
is  sometimes  made  a  little  difficult  by 
the  vigour  of  your  special  devotees. 
They  have  ceased,  indeed,  thank  Hea- 
ven !  to  imitate  you ;  and  even  in  *  de- 
scriptive articles '  the  touch  of  Mr.  Gig- 
adibs,  of  him  whom  '  we  almost  took 
for  the  true  Dickens,'  has  disappeared. 
The  young  lions  of  the  Press  no  longer 
mimic  your  less  admirable  mannerisms 
—  do  not  strain  so  much  after  fantastic 
comparisons,  do  not  (in  your  manner 
and  Mr.  Carlyle's)  give  people  nick- 
names derived  from  their  teeth,  or  their 
complexion  ;  and,  generally,  we  are 
spared  second-hand  copies  of  all  that  in 
your  style  was  least  to  be  commended. 
But,  though  improved  by  lapse  of  time 
in  this  respect,  your  devotees  still  put 
on  little  conscious  airs  of  virtue,  robust 


12       LETTERS    TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

manliness,  and  so  forth,  which  would 
have  irritated  you  very  much,  and  there 
survive  some  press  men  who  seem  to 
have  read  you  a  little  (especially  your 
later  works),  and  never  to  have  read  any- 
thing else.  Now  familiarity  with  the 
pages  of  *  Our  Mutual  Friend '  and 
'  Dombey  and  Son  '  does  not  precisely 
constitute  a  liberal  education,  and  the 
assumption  that  it  does  is  apt  (quite  un- 
reasonably) to  prejudice  people  against 
the  greatest  comic  genius  of  modern 
times. 

On  the  other  hand.  Time  is  at  last 
beginning  to  sift  the  true  admirers  of 
Dickens  from  the  false.  Yours,  Sir,  in 
the  best  sense  of  the  word,  is  a  popular 
success,  a  popular  reputation.  For  ex- 
ample, I  know  that,  in  a  remote  and 
even  Pictish  part  of  this  kingdom,  a 
rural  household,  humble  and  under  the 
shadow  of  a  sorrow  inevitably  approach- 
ing, has  found  in  '  David  Copperfield ' 
oblivion  of  winter,  of  sorrow,  and  of  sick- 
ness.     On  the  other  hand,  people  are 


Die  ICE  NS  13 

now  picking  up  heart  to  say  that  'they 
cannot  read  Dickens,'  and  that  they  par- 
ticularly detest  '  Pickwick.'  I  believe  it 
vvas  young  ladies  who  first  had  the  cour* 
age  of  their  convictions  in  this  respect. 
*Tout  sied  aux  belles,'  and  the  fair,  in 
the  confidence  of  youth,  often  venture 
on  remarkable  confessions.  In  your 
•  Natural  History  of  Young  Ladies '  I 
do  not  remember  that  you  describe  the 
Humorous  Young  Lady.^  She  is  a  very 
rare  bird  indeed,  and  humour  generally 
is  at  a  deplorably  low  level  in  England. 

Hence  come  all  sorts  of  mischief, 
arisen  since  you  left  us ;  and,  it  may  be 
Said,  that  inordinate  philanthropy,  gen- 
teel sympathy  with  Irish  murder  and 
arson,  Societies  for  Badgering  the  Poor, 
Esoteric  Buddhism,  and  a  score  of  other 
plagues,  including  what  was  once  called 
^stheticism,  are  all,  primarily,  due  to 
want  of  humour.     People  discuss,  with 

1  I  am  infof  med  that  the  Natural  History  of  Young 
Ladies  is  attributed,  by  some  writers,  to  another  phi- 
losopher, the  author  o£  The  Art  of  Pluck. 


14      LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

the  gravest  faces,  matters  which  prop- 
erly should  only  be  stated  as  the  wild- 
est paradoxes.  It  naturally  follows  that, 
in  a  period  almost  destitute  of  humour, 
many  respectable  persons  '  cannot  read 
Dickens,'  and  are  not  ashamed  to  glory 
in  their  shame.  We  ought  not  to  be 
angry  with  others  for  their  misfortunes  ; 
and  yet  when  one  meets  the  ci-^tins  who 
boast  that  they  cannot  read  Dickens, 
one  certainly  does  feel  much  as  Mr. 
Samuel  Weller  felt  when  he  encountered 
Mr.  Job  Trotter. 

How  very  singular  has  been  the  his- 
tory of  the  decline  of  humour.  Is  there 
any  profound  psychological  truth  to  be 
gathered  from  consideration  of  the  fact 
that  humour  has  gone  out  with  cruelty  ? 
A  hundred  years  ago,  eighty  years  ago 
—  nay,  fifty  years  ago  — we  were  a  cruel 
but  also  a  humorous  people.  We  had 
bull-baitings,  and  badger-drawings,  and 
hustings,  and  prize-fights,  and  cock-fights  •, 
we  went  to  see  men  hanged  ;  the  pillory 
and  the  stocks  were  no  empty  *  terrors 


DICKENS  15 

unto  evil-doers,'  for  there  was  commonly 
a  malefactor  occupying  each  of  these 
institutions.  With  all  this  we  had  a 
broad-blown  comic  sense.  We  had  Ho- 
garth, and  Bunbury,  and  George  Cruik- 
shank,  and  Gilray ;  we  had  Leech  and 
Surtees,  and  the  creator  of  Tittlebat 
Titmouse  ;  we  had  the  Shepherd  of  the 
*  Noctes,'  and,  above  all,  we  \\z.(S.  yoic. 

From  the  old  giants  of  English  fun  — 
burly  persons  delighting  in  broad  carica- 
ture, in  decided  colours,  in  cockney  jokes, 
in  swashing  blows  at  the  more  promi- 
nent and  obvious  human  follies — from 
these  you  derived  the  splendid  high  spir- 
its and  unhesitating  mirth  of  your  earlier 
works.  Mr.  Squeers,  and  Sam  Weller, 
and  Mrs.  Gamp,  and  all  the  Pickwick- 
ians,  and  Mr.  Dowler,  and  John  Browdie 
—  these  and  their  immortal  companions 
were  reared,  so  to  speak,  on  the  beef  and 
beer  of  that  naughty,  fox-hunting,  bad- 
ger-baiting old  England,  which  we  have 
improved  out  of  existence.  And  these 
characters,  assuredly,  are  your  best ;  by 


1 6  LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

them,  though  stupid  people  cannot  read 
about  Ihem,  you  will  live  while  there  is 
a  laugh  left  among  us.  Perhaps  that 
does  not  assure  you  a  very  prolonged 
existence,  but  only  the  future  can  show. 
The  dismal  seriousness  of  the  time 
cannot,  let  us  hope,  last  for  ever  and 
a  day.  Honest  old  Laughter,  the  true 
lutin  of  your  inspiration,  must  have  life 
left  in  him  yet,  and  cannot  die  ;  though 
it  is  true  that  the  taste  for  your  pa- 
thos, and  your  melodrama,  and  plots 
constructed  after  your  favourite  fashion 
('  Great  Expectations  '  and  the  '  Tale  of 
Two  Cities'  are  exceptions)  may  go  by 
and  never  be  regretted.  Were  people 
simpler,  or  only  less  clear-sighted,  as  far 
as  your  pathos  is  concerned,  a  genera- 
tion ago  .?  Jeffrey,  the  hard-headed  shal- 
low critic,  who  declared  that  Wordsworth 
'would  never  do,'  cried,  'wept  like  any- 
thing,' over  your  Little  Nell.  One  still 
laughs  as  heartily  as  ever  with  Dick 
Swiveller  ;  but  who  can  cry  over  Little 
NeU? 


DICKENS  ly 

Ah,  Sir,  how  could  you  —  who  knew  so 
intimately,  who  remembered  so  strangely 
well  the  fancies,  the  dreams,  the  suffer- 
ings of  childhood  —  how  could  you  '  wal- 
low naked  in  the  pathetic,'  and  massacre 
holocausts  of  the  Innocents  ?  To  draw 
tears  by  gloating  over  a  child's  death- 
bed, was  it  worthy  of  you  ?  Was  it  the 
kind  of  work  over  which  our  hearts 
should  melt  ?  I  confess  that  Little  Nell 
might  die  a  dozen  times,  and  be  wel- 
comed by  whole  legions  of  Angels,  and 
I  (like  the  bereaved  fowl  mentioned  by 
Pet  Marjory)  would  remain  unmoved. 

She  was  more  than  usual  calm. 
She  did  not  give  a  single  dam^ 

wrote  the  astonishing  child  who  diverted 
the  leisure  of  Scott,  Over  your  Little 
Nell  and  your  Little  Dombey  I  remain 
more  than  usual  calm  ;  and  probably  so 
do  thousands  of  your  most  sincere  ad- 
mirers. But  about  matter  of  this  kind, 
and  the  unsealing  of  the  fountains  of 
tears,  who  can  argue  ?  Where  is  taste  ? 
where  is  truth  ?    What  tears  are  '  manly. 


1 8     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

Sir,  manly,'  as  Fred  Bayham  has  it ;  and 
of  what  lamentations  ought  we  rather 
to  be  ashamed  ?  Sunt  lacryince  rerum  ; 
one  has  been  moved  in  the  cell  where 
Socrates  tasted  the  hemlock  ;  or  by  the 
river-banks  where  Syracusan  arrows  slew 
the  parched  Athenians  among  the  mire 
and  blood  ;  or,  in  fiction,  when  Colonel 
Newcome  said  Adsiim,  or  over  the  diary 
of  Clare  Doria  Forey,  or  where  Aramis 
laments,  with  strange  tears,  the  death  of 
Porthos.  But  over  Dombey  (the  Son), 
or  Little  Nell,  one  declines  to  snivel. 

When  an  author  deliberately  sits  down 
and  says,  '  Now,  let  us  have  a  good  cry,' 
he  poisons  the  wells  of  sensibility  and 
chokes,  at  least  in  many  breasts,  the 
fountain  of  tears.  Out  of  '  Dombey  and 
Son '  there  is  little  we  care  to  remember 
except  the  deathless  Mr.  Toots  ;  just  as 
we  forget  the  melodramatics  of  '  Martin 
Chuzzlewit.'  I  have  read  in  that  book  a 
score  of  times  ;  I  never  see  it  but  I  revel 
in  it  —  in  Pecksniff,  and  Mrs.  Gamp,  and 
the  Americans.     But  what  the  plot  is 


DICKENS  19 

all  about,  what  Jonas  did,  what  Montagu 
Tigg  had  to  make  in  the  matter,  what 
all  the  pictures  with  plenty  of  shading 
illustrate,  I  have  never  been  able  to  com- 
prehend. In  the  same  way,  one  of  your 
most  thorough -going  admirers  has  al- 
lowed (in  the  licence  of  private  conver- 
sation) that  '  Ralph  Nickleby  and  Monk 
are  too  steep  ; '  and  probably  a  cultivated 
taste  will  always  find  them  a  little  pre- 
cipitous. 

'  Too  steep  : '  —  the  slang  expresses 
that  defect  of  an  ardent  genius,  carried 
above  itself,  and  out  of  the  air  we 
breathe,  both  in  its  grotesque  and  in  its 
gloomy  imaginations.  To  force  the 
note,  to  press  fantasy  too  hard,  to 
deepen  the  gloom  with  black  over  the 
indigo,  that  was  the  failing  which  proved 
you  mortal.  To  take  an  instance  in 
little  :  when  Pip  went  to  Mr.  Pumble- 
chook's,  the  boy  thought  the  seedsman 
*a  very  happy  man  to  have  so  many 
little  drawers  in  his  shop.'  The  reflec- 
tion is  thoroughly  boyish  ;  but  then  you 


20       LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

add,  *  I  wondered  whether  the  flower- 
seeds  and  bulbs  ever  wanted  of  a  fine 
day  to  break  out  of  those  jails  and 
bloom.'  That  is  not  boyish  at  all  ;  that 
is  the  hard-driven,  jaded  literary  fancy 
at  work. 

'  So  we  arraign  her ;  but  she,'  the 
Genius  of  Charles  Dickens,  how  brill- 
iant, how  kindly,  how  beneficent  she  is  ! 
dwelling  by  a  fountain  of  laughter  im- 
perishable ;  though  there  is  something 
of  an  alien  salt  in  the  neighbouring 
fountain  of  tears.  How  poor  the  world 
of  fancy  would  be,  how  'dispeopled  of 
her  dreams,'  if,  in  some  ruin  of  the  social 
system,  the  books  of  Dickens  were  lost ; 
and  if  The  Dodger,  and  Charley  Bates, 
and  Mr.  Crinkle,  and  Miss  Squeers,  and 
Sam  Weller,  and  Mrs.  Gamp,  and  Dick 
Swiveller  were  to  perish,  or  to  vanish 
with  Menander's  men  and  women  !  We 
cannot  think  of  our  world  without  them  ; 
and,  children  of  dreams  as  they  are,  they 
seem  more  essential  than  great  states- 
men, artists,  soldiers,  who  have  actually 


DICKENS  21 

worn  flesh  and  blood,  ribbons  and  or- 
ders, gowns  and  uniforms.  May  we  not 
almost  welcome  '  Free  Education  '  ?  for 
every  Englishman  who  can  read,  unless 
he  be  an  Ass.  is  a  reader  the  more  for 
you. 


III. 

To  Pierre  de  Ronsard. 
(prince  of  poets.) 

Master  and  Prince  of  Poets,  — 
As  we  know  what  choice  thou  madest 
of  a  sepulchre  (a  choice  how  ill  fulfilled 
by  the  jealousy  of  Fate),  so  we  know 
well  the  manner  of  thy  chosen  immor- 
tality. In  the  Plains  Elysian,  among 
the  heroes  and  the  ladies  of  old  song, 
there  was  thy  Love  with  thee  to  enjoy 
her  paradise  in  an  eternal  spring. 

Lh  du  plaisant  Avril  la  saison  immortelle 

Sans  eschajtge  le  suit, 
La  terre  sans  labeur,  de  sa  grasse  mamelle, 

Toute  chose  y  produit  ; 
D'enbas  la  troupe  sainte  autrefois  amoureuse, 

Notis  ho7iorant  stir  tous, 
Viendra  nous  saltier,  s'estimaiit  bien-heureuse 

De  s'accointer  de  nous. 

There  thou  dwellest,  with    the  learned 
lovers  of  old  days,  with  Belleau,  and  Du 


PIERRE  DE  RONSARD  2$ 

Bellay,  and  Baif,  and  the  flower  of  the 
maidens  of  Anjou.  Surely  no  rumour 
reaches  thee,  in  that  happy  place  of 
reconciled  affections,  no  rumour  of  the 
rudeness  of  Time,  the  despite  of  men, 
and  the  change  which  stole  from  thy 
locks,  so  early  grey,  the  crown  of  laurels 
and  of  thine  own  roses.  How  different 
from  thy  choice  of  a  sepulchre  have  been 
the  fortunes  of  thy  tomb ! 

I  will  that  none  should  break 
The  marble  for  my  sake. 
Wishful  to  make  more  fair 
My  sepulchre ! 

So  didst  thou  sing,  or  so  thy  sweet  num- 
bers run  in  my  rude  English.  Wearied 
of  Courts  and  of  priories,  thou  didst  de- 
sire a  grave  beside  thine  own  Loire,  not 
remote  from 

The  caves,  the  founts  that  fall 
From  the  high  mountain  wall, 
That  fall  and  flash  and  fleet, 
With  silver  feet. 

Only  a  laurel  tree 

Shall  guard  the  grave  of  me  j  ... 


24       LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

Only  Apollo's  bough 
Shall  shade  me  now  ! 

Far  other  has  been  thy  sepulchre : 
in  the  free  air,  among  the  field  flowers, 
but  in  thy  priory  of  Saint  Cosme,  with 
marble  for  a  monument,  and  no  green 
grass  to  cover  thee.  Restless  wert  thou 
in  thy  life  ;  thy  dust  was  not  to  be  rest- 
ful in  thy  death.  The  Huguenots,  ces 
nouveaux  Chretiens  qui  la  France  ont 
pilUe,  destroyed  thy  tomb,  and  the  warn- 
ing of  the  later  monument, 

ABI,   NEFASTE,   QUAM   CALCAS   HUMUM   SACRA   EST, 

has  not  scared  away  malicious  men. 
The  storm  that  passed  over  France  a 
hundred  years  ago,  more  terrible  than 
the  religious  wars  that  thou  didst  weep 
for,  has  swept  the  column  from  the  tomb. 
The  marble  was  broken  by  violent  hands, 
and  the  shattered  sepulchre  of  the  Prince 
of  Poets  gained  a  dusty  hospitality  from 
the  museum  of  a  country  town.  Better 
had  been  the  laurel  of  thy  desire,  the 
creeping  vine,  and  the  ivy  tree. 


PIERRE  DE  RONSARD  2$ 

Scarce  more  fortunate,  for  long,  than 
thy  monument  was  thy  memory.  Thou 
hast  not  encountered,  Master,  in  the 
Paradise  of  Poets,  Messieurs  Malherbe, 
De  Balzac,  and  Boileau  —  Boileau  who 
spoke  of  thee  as  Ce  poke  orgueilleux 
trSbuchi  de  si  haiit  ! 

These  gallant  gentlemen,  I  make  no 
doubt,  are  happy  after  their  own  fashion, 
backbiting  each  other  and  thee  in  the 
Paradise  of  Critics.  In  their  time  they 
wrought  thee  much  evil,  grumbling  that 
thou  wrotest  in  Greek  and  Latin  (of 
which  tongues  certain  of  them  had  but 
little  skill),  and  blaming  thy  many  lyric 
melodies  and  the  free  flow  of  thy  lines. 
What  said  M.  de  Balzac  to  M.  Chape- 
lain  ?  *  M.  de  Malherbe,  M.  de  Grasse, 
and  yourself  must  be  very  little  poets, 
if  Ronsard  be  a  great  one.'  Time  has 
brought  in  his  revenges,  and  Messieurs 
Chapelain  and  De  Grasse  are  as  well 
forgotten  as  thou  art  well  remembered. 
Men  could  not  always  be  deaf  to  thy 
sweet  old  songs,  nor  blind  to  the  beauty 


26        LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

of  thy  roses  and  thy  loves.  When  they 
took  the  wax  out  of  their  ears  that  M. 
Boileau  had  given  them  lest  they  should 
hear  the  singing  of  thy  Sirens,  then 
they  were  deaf  no  longer,  then  they 
heard  the  old  deaf  poet  singing  and 
made  answer  to  his  lays.  Hast  thou 
not  heard  these  sounds  }  have  they  not 
reached  thee,  the  voices  and  the  lyres 
of  Theophile  Gautier  and  Alfred  de 
Musset  .■*  Methinks  thou  hast  marked 
them,  and  been  glad  that  the  old  notes 
were  ringing  again  and  the  old  French 
lyric  measures  tripping  to  thine  ancient 
harmonies,  echoing  and  replying  to  the 
Muses  of  Horace  and  Catullus.  Re- 
turning to  Nature,  poets  returned  to 
thee.  Thy  monument  has  perished,  but 
not  thy  music,  and  the  Prince  of  Poets 
has  returned  to  his  own  again  in  a  glo- 
rious Restoration. 

Through  the  dust  and  smoke  of  ages, 
and  through  the  centuries  of  wars  we 
strain  our  eyes  and  try  to  gain  a  glimpse 
of  thee,  Master,  in  thy  good  days,  when 


PIERRE  DE  RONSARD  2/ 

the  Muses  walked  with  thee.  We  seem 
to  mark  thee  wandering  silent  through 
some  little  village,  or  dreaming  in  the 
woods,  or  loitering  among  thy  lonely 
places,  or  in  gardens  where  the  roses 
blossom  among  wilder  flowers,  or  on 
river  banks  where  the  whispering  jjop- 
lars  and  sighing  reeds  make  answer  to 
the  murmur  of  the  waters.  Such  a  pic- 
ture hast  thou  drawn  of  thyself  in  the 
summer  afternoons. 

Je  m'en  vais  pourmener  tantost  parmy  la  plaine, 
Tantost  en  un  village,  et  tantost  en  un  bois, 
Et  tantost  par  les  lieux  solitaires  et  cois. 
J'aime  fort  les  jardins  qui  sentent  le  sauvage, 
J'aime  le  flot  de  I'eau  qui  gazoiiille  au  rivage. 

Still,  methinks,  there  was  a  book  in  the 
hand  of  the  grave  and  learned  poet ; 
still  thou  wouldst  carry  thy  Horace,  thy 
Catullus,  thy  Theocritus,  through  the 
gem-like  weather  of  the  Renouveau^ 
when  the  woods  were  enamelled  with 
flowers,  and  the  young  Spring  was 
lodged,  like  a  wandering  prince,  in  his 
great  palaces  hung  with  green  : 


28       LETTERS  TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

Orgueilleux  de  ses  fleurs,  enfle  de  sa  jeunesse, 
Log^  comme  un  grand  Prince  en  ses  vertes  maisond  I 

Thou  sawest,  in  these  woods  by  Loire 
side,  the  fair  shapes  of  old  religion, 
Fauns,  Nymphs,  and  Satyrs,  and  heard'st 
in  the  nightingale's  music  the  plaint 
of  Philomel.  The  ancient  poets  came 
back  in  the  train  of  thyself  and  of  the 
Spring,  and  learning  was  scarce  less 
dear  to  thee  than  love  ;  and  thy  ladies 
seemed  fairer  for  the  names  they  bor- 
rowed from  the  beauties  of  forgotten 
days,  Helen  and  Cassandra.  How 
sweetly  didst  thou  sing  to  them  thine 
old  morality,  and  how  gravely  didst  thou 
teach  the  lesson  of  the  Roses  !  Well 
didst  thou  know  it,  well  didst  thou  love 
the  Rose,  since  thy  nurse,  carrying  thee^ 
an  infant,  to  the  holy  font,  let  fall  on 
thee  the  sacred  water  brimmed  with 
floating  blossoms  of  the  Rose ! 

Mignonne,  aliens  voir  si  la  Rose, 
Qui  ce  matin  avoit  desclose 
Sa  robe  de  pourpre  au  soleil, 
A  point  perdu  ceste  vespree 


PIERRE  DE  RONSARD  29 

Les  plis  de  sa  robe  pourpree, 
Et  son  teint  au  votre  pareil. 

A-nd  again, 

La  belle  Rose  du  Printemps, 
Aubert,  admoneste  les  hommes 
Passer  joyeusement  le  temps, 
Et  pendant  que  jeunes  nous  sommes, 
Esbattre  la  fleur  de  nos  ans. 

In  the  same  mood,  looking  far  down 
the  future,  thou  sangest  of  thy  lady's 
age,  the  most  sad,  the  most  beautiful  of 
thy  sad  and  beautiful  lays  ;  for  if  thy 
bees  gathered  much  honey  't  was  some- 
what bitter  to  taste,  as  that  of  the  Sar- 
dinian yews.  How  clearly  we  see  the 
great  hall,  the  grey  lady  spinning  and 
humming  among  her  drowsy  maids, 
and  how  they  waken  at  the  word,  and 
she  sees  her  spring  in  their  eyes,  and 
they  forecast  their  winter  in  her  face, 
when  she  murmurs  '  'T  was  Ronsard 
sang  of  me.' 

Winter,  and  summer,  and  spring, 
how  swiftly  they  pass,  and  how  early 
time  brought  thee  his  sorrows,  and  grief 
cast  her  dust  upon  thy  head. 


30        LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

Adieu  ma  Lyre,  adieu  fillettes, 
Jadis  mes  douces  amourettes, 
Adieu,  je  sens  venir  ma  fin, 
Nul  passetemps  de  ma  jeunesse 
Ne  m'accompagne  en  la  vieillesse, 
Que  le  feu,  le  lict  et  le  vin. 

Wine,  and  a  soft  bed,  and  a  bright  fire  : 
to  this  trinity  of  poor  pleasures  we  come 
soon,  if,  indeed,  wine  be  left  to  us. 
Poetry  herself  deserts  us  ;  is  it  not  said 
that  Bacchus  never  forgives  a  renegade? 
and  most  of  us  turn  recreants  to  Bac- 
chus. Even  the  bright  fire,  I  fear,  was 
not  always  there  to  warm  thine  old 
blood.  Master,  or,  if  fire  there  were,  the 
wood  was  not  bought  with  thy  book- 
seller's money.  When  autumn  was  draw- 
ing in  during  thine  early  old  age,  in 
1584,  didst  thou  not  write  that  thou 
hadst  never  received  a  sou  at  the  hands 
of  all  the  publishers  who  vended  thy 
books  .-'  And  as  thou  wert  about  put- 
ting forth  thy  folio  edition  of  1584,  thou 
didst  pray  Buon,  the  bookseller,  to  give 
thee  sixty  crowns  to  buy  wood  withal, 
and  make  thee  a  bright   fire   in  winte/ 


PIERRE  DE  RONSARD  31 

weather,  and  comfort  thine  old  age  with 
thy  friend  Gallandius.  And  if  Buon 
will  not  pay,  then  to  try  the  other  book- 
sellers, '  that  wish  to  take  everything 
and  give  nothing.' 

Was  it  knowledge  of  this  passage, 
Master,  or  ignorance  of  everything  else, 
that  made  certain  of  the  common  stead- 
fast dunces  of  our  days  speak  of  thee  as 
if  thou  hadst  been  a  starveHng,  neglected 
poetaster,  jealous  forsooth,  of  Maitre 
Frangoys  Rabelais  ?  See  how  ignorantly 
M.  Fleury  writes,  who  teaches  French 
literature  withal  to  them  of  Muscovy, 
and  hath  indited  a  Life  of  Rabelais. 
'  Rabelais  etait  revetu  d'un  emploi  hon- 
orable ;  Ronsard  etait  traite  en  subal- 
terne,'  quoth  this  wondrous  professor. 
What !  Pierre  de  Ronsard,  a  gentleman 
of  a  noble  house,  holding  the  revenue 
of  many  abbeys,  the  friend  of  Mary 
Stuart,  of  the  Due  d'Orleans,  of  Charles 
IX.,  he  is  traits  en  subalterne,  and  is 
jealous  of  a  f rocked  or  unfrocked  ma- 
nant  like  Maitre  Frangoys  !     And  then 


32       LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

this  amazing  Fleury  falls  foul  of  thine 
epitaph  on  Maitre  Frangoys  and  cries, 
*  Ronsard  a  voulu  faire  des  vers  me- 
chants  ;  il  n*a  fait  que  de  mechants  vers.' 
More  truly  saith  M.  Sainte-Beuve,  '  If  the 
good  Rabelais  had  returned  to  Meudon 
on  the  day  when  this  epitaph  was  made 
over  the  wine,  he  would,  methinks,  have 
laughed  heartily.*  But  what  shall  be 
said  of  a  Professor  like  the  egregious 
M.  Fleury,  who  holds  that  Ronsard  was 
despised  at  Court  ?  Was  there  a  party 
at  tennis  when  the  king  would  not  fain 
have  had  thee  on  his  side,  declaring 
that  he  ever  won  when  Ronsard  was  his 
partner  ?  Did  he  not  give  thee  bene- 
fices, and  many  priories,  and  call  thee 
his  father  in  Apollo,  and  even,  so  they 
say,  bid  thee  sit  down  beside  him  on  his 
throne  ?  Away,  ye  scandalous  folk,  who 
tell  us  that  there  was  strife  between  the 
Prince  of  Poets  and  the  King  of  Mirth. 
Naught  have  ye  by  way  of  proof  of  your 
slander  but  the  talk  of  Jean  Bernier,  a 
scurrilous,  starveling  apothecary,  who  put 


PIERRE  DE  RONSARD  33 

forth  his  fables  in  1697,  a  century  and  a 
half  after  Maitre  Frangoys  died.  Bayle 
quoted  this  fellow  in  a  note,  and  ye  all 
steal  the  tattle  one  from  another  in  your 
dull  manner,  and  know  not  whence  it 
comes,  nor  even  that  Bayle  would  none 
of  it  and  mocked  its  author.  With  so 
little  knowledge  is  history  written,  and 
thus  doth  each  chattering  brook  of  a 
'  Life  '  swell  with  its  tribute  *  that  great 
Mississippi  of  falsehood,'  Biography. 
3 


IV. 

To  Herodotus. 

To  Herodotus  of  Halicarnassus,  greet- 
ing. —  Concerning  the  matters  set  forth 
in  your  histories,  and  the  tales  you 
tell  about  both  Greeks  and  Barbarians, 
whether  they  be  true,  or  whether  they  be 
false,  men  dispute  not  little  but  a  great 
deal.  Wherefore  I,  being  concerned  to 
know  the  verity,  did  set  forth  to  make 
search  in  every  manner,  and  came  in 
my  quest  even  unto  the  ends  of  the 
earth.  For  there  is  an  island  of  the 
Cimmerians  beyond  the  Straits  of  He- 
racles, some  three  days'  voyage  to  a 
ship  that  hath  a  fair  following  wind  in 
her  sails  ;  and  there  it  is  said  that  men 
know  many  things  from  of  old  :  thither, 
then,  I  came  in  my  inquiry.  Now,  the 
island  is  not   small,  but  large,   greater 


HERODOTUS  35 

than  the  whole  of  Hellas  ;  and  they  call 
it  Britain.  In  that  island  the  east  wind 
blows  for  ten  parts  of  the  year,  and  the 
people  know  not  how  to  cover  them- 
selves from  the  cold.  But  for  the  other 
two  months  of  the  year  the  sun  shines 
fiercely,  so  that  some  of  them  die  there- 
of, and  others  die  of  the  frozen  mixed 
drinks ;  for  they  have  ice  even  in  the 
summer,  and  this  ice  they  put  to  their 
liquor.  Through  the  whole  of  this  island, 
from  the  west  even  to  the  east,  there 
flows  a  river  called  Thames :  a  great 
river  and  a  laborious,  but  not  to  be  lik- 
ened to  the  River  of  Egypt. 

The  mouth  of  this  river,  where  I 
stepped  out  from  my  ship,  is  exceedingly 
foul  and  of  an  evil  savour  by  reason  of 
the  city  on  the  banks.  Now  this  city 
is  several  hundred  parasangs  in  circum- 
ference. Yet  a  man  that  needed  not  to 
breathe  the  air  might  go  round  it  in 
one  hour,  in  chariots  that  run  under  the 
earth  ;  and  these  chariots  are  drawn  by 
creatures   that  breathe  smoke  and  sul- 


36        LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

phur,  such  as  Orpheus  mentions  in  his 
'  Argonautica,'  if  it  be  by  Orpheus.  The 
people  of  the  town,  when  I  inquired  of 
them  concerning  Herodotus  of  Halicar- 
nassus,  looked  on  me  with  amazement, 
and  went  straightway  about  their  busi- 
ness, —  namely,  to  seek  out  whatsoever 
new  thing  is  coming  to  pass  all  over  the 
whole  inhabited  world,  and  as  for  things 
old,  they  take  no  keep  of  them. 

Nevertheless,  by  diligence  I  learned 
that  he  who  in  this  land  knew  most 
concerning  Herodotus  was  a  priest,  and 
dwelt  in  the  priests'  city  on  the  river 
which  is  called  the  City  of  the  Ford  of 
the  Ox.  But  whether  lo,  when  she  wore 
a  cow's  shape,  had  passed  by  that  way 
in  her  wanderings,  and  thence  comes  the 
name  of  that  city,  I  could  not  (though 
I  asked  all  men  I  met)  learn  aught 
with  certainty.  But  to  me,  considering 
this,  it  seemed  that  lo  must  have  come 
thither.     And  now  farewell  to  lo. 

To  the  City  of  the  Priests  there  are 
two  roads :    one  by  land ;    and  one   by 


HERODOTUS  37 

water,  following  the  river.  To  a  well- 
girdled  man,  the  land  journey  is  but  one 
day's  travel ;  by  the  river  it  is  longer  but 
more  pleasant.  Now  that  river  flows, 
as  I  said,  from  the  west  to  the  east. 
And  there  is  in  it  a  fish  called  chub, 
which  they  catch  ;  but  they  do  not  eat 
it,  for  a  certain  sacred  reason.  Also 
there  is  a  fish  called  trout,  and  this  is 
the  manner  of  his  catching.  They  build 
for  this  purpose  great  dams  of  wood, 
which  they  call  weirs.  Having  built 
the  weir  they  sit  upon  it  with  rods  in 
their  hands,  and  a  line  on  the  rod,  and 
at  the  end  of  the  line  a  little  fish.  There 
then  they  *  sit  and  spin  in  the  sun,'  as 
one  of  their  poets  says,  not  for  a  short 
time  but  for  many  days,  having  rods  in 
their  hands  and  eating  and  drinking. 
In  this  wise  they  angle  for  the  fish  called 
trout ;  but  whether  they  ever  catch  him 
or  not,  not  having  seen  it,  I  cannot  say ; 
for  it  is  not  pleasant  to  me  to  speak 
things  concerning  which  I  know  not  the 
truth. 


38        LETTERS    TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

Now,  after  sailing  and  rowing  against 
the  stream  for  certain  days,  I  came  to 
the  City  of  the  Ford  of  the  Ox.  Here 
the  river  changes  his  name,  and  is  called 
Isis,  after  the  name  of  the  goddess  of 
the  Egyptians.  But  whether  the  Brit- 
ons brought  the  name  from  Egypt  or 
whether  the  Egyptians  took  it  from  the 
Britons,  not  knowing  I  prefer  not  to  say. 
But  to  me  it  seems  that  the  Britons  are 
a  colony  of  the  Egyptians,  or  the  Egyp- 
tians a  colony  of  the  Britons.  More- 
over, when  I  was  in  Egypt  I  saw  certain 
soldiers  in  white  helmets,  who  were  cer- 
tainly British.  But  what  they  did  there 
(as  Egypt  neither  belongs  to  Britain  nor 
Britain  to  Egypt)  I  know  not,  neither 
could  they  tell  me.  But  one  of  them  re- 
plied to  me  in  that  Hne  of  Homer  (if  the 
Odyssey  be  Homer's),  *We  have  come 
to  a  sorry  Cyprus,  and  a  sad  Egypt.' 
Others  told  me  that  they  once  marched 
against  the  Ethiopians,  and  having  de- 
feated them  several  times,  then  came 
back  again,  leaving  their  property  to  the 


HERODOTUS  39 

Ethiopians.  But  as  to  the  truth  of  this 
I  leave  it  to  every  man  to  form  his  own 
opinion. 

Having  come  into  the  City  of  the 
Priests,  I  went  forth  into  the  street,  and 
found  a  priest  of  the  baser  sort,  who  for 
a  piece  of  silver  led  me  hither  and  thither 
among  the  temples,  discoursing  of  many 
things. 

Now  it  seemed  to  me  a  strange  thing 
that  the  city  was  empty,  and  no  man 
dwelling  therein,  save  a  few  priests  only, 
and  their  wives,  and  their  children,  who 
are  drawn  to  and  fro  in  little  carriages 
dragged  by  women.  But  the  priest  told 
me  that  during  half  the  year  the  city 
was  desolate,  for  that  there  came  some- 
what called  'The  Long,'  or  *  The  Vac,' 
and  drave  out  the  young  priests.  And 
he  said  that  these  did  no  other  thing 
but  row  boats,  and  throw  balls  from  one 
to  the  other,  and  this  they  were  made 
to  do,  he  said,  that  the  young  priests 
might  learn  to  be  humble,  for  they  are 
the  proudest  of  men.     But  whether  he 


40       LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

spoke  truth  or  not  I  know  not,  only  I 
set  down  what  he  told  me.  But  to  any- 
one considering  it,  this  appears  rather 
to  jump  with  his  story  —  namely,  that 
the  young  priests  have  houses  on  the 
river,  painted  of  divers  colours,  all  of 
them  empty. 

Then  the  priest,  at  my  desire,  brought 
me  to  one  of  the  temples,  that  I  might 
seek  out  all  things  concerning  Herodo- 
tus the  Halicarnassian,  from  one  who 
knew.  Now  this  temple  is  not  the  fair- 
est in  the  city,  but  less  fair  and  goodly 
than  the  old  temples,  yet  goodlier  and 
more  fair  than  the  new  temples  ;  and 
over  the  roof  there  is  the  image  of  an 
eagle  made  of  stone  —  no  small  marvel, 
but  a  great  one,  how  men  came  to  fash- 
ion him  ;  and  that  temple  is  called  the 
House  of  Queens.  Here  they  sacrifice 
a  boar  once  every  year  ;  and  concerning 
this  they  tell  a  certain  sacred  story  which 
I  know  but  will  not  utter. 

Then  I  was  brought  to  the  priest  who 
had   a   name   for  knowing   most   about 


HERODOTUS  4 1 

Egypt,  and  the  Egyptians,  and  the  As- 
syrians, and  the  Cappadocians,  and  all 
the  kingdoms  of  the  Great  King.  He 
came  out  to  me,  being  attired  in  a  black 
robe,  and  wearing  on  his  head  a  square 
cap.  But  why  the  priests  have  square 
caps  I  know,  and  he  who  has  been  in- 
itiated into  the  mysteries  which  they  call 
•  Matric '  knows,  but  I  prefer  not  to  telL 
Concerning  the  square  cap,  then,  let  this 
be  sufficient.  Now,  the  priest  received 
me  courteously,  and  when  I  asked  him, 
concerning  Herodotus,  whether  he  were 
a  true  man  or  not,  he  smiled,  and  an- 
swered *Abu  Goosh,'  which,  in  the 
tongue  of  the  Arabians,  means  '  The 
Father  of  Liars.'  Then  he  went  on  to 
speak  concerning  Herodotus,  and  he  said 
in  his  discourse  that  Herodotus  not  only 
told  the  thing  which  was  not,  but  that 
he  did  so  wilfully,  as  one  knowing  the 
truth  but  concealing  it.  For  example, 
quoth  he,  '  Solon  never  went  to  see  Croe- 
sus, as  Herodotus  avers  ;  nor  did  those 
about  Xerxes  ever  dream  dreams  ;   but 


42       LETTERS  TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

Herodotus,  out  of  his  abundant  wicked- 
ness, invented  these  things. 

'Now  behold,'  he  went  on,  'how  the 
curse  of  the  Gods  falls  upon  Herodotus. 
For  he  pretends  that  he  saw  Cadmeian 
inscriptions  at  Thebes.  Now  I  do  not 
believe  there  were  any  Cadmeian  inscrip- 
tions there  :  therefore  Herodotus  is  most 
manifestly  lying.  Moreover,  this  Herodo- 
tus never  speaks  of  Sophocles  the  Athe- 
nian, and  why  not .''  Because  he,  being 
a  child  at  school,  did  not  learn  Sophocles 
by  heart :  for  the  tragedies  of  Sophocles 
could  not  have  been  learned  at  school 
before  they  were  written,  nor  can  any 
man  quote  a  poet  whom  he  never  learned 
at  school.  Moreover,  as  all  those  about 
Herodotus  knew  Sophocles  well,  he  could 
not  appear  to  them  to  be  learned  by 
showing  that  he  knew  what  they  knew 
also.'  Then  I  thought  the  priest  was 
making  game  and  sport,  saying  first  that 
Herodotus  could  know  no  poet  whom 
he  had  not  learned  at  school,  and  then 
saying  that  all  the  men  of  his  time  well 


HERODOTUS  43 

knew  this  poet,  'about  whom  everyone 
was  talking.'  But  the  priest  seemed  not 
to  know  that  Herodotus  and  Sophocles 
were  friends,  which  is  proved  by  this, 
that  Sophocles  wrote  an  ode  in  praise  of 
Herodotus. 

Then  he  went  on,  and  though  I  were 
to  write  with  a  hundred  hands  (like 
Briareus,  of  whom  Homer  makes  men- 
tion) I  could  not  tell  you  all  the  things 
that  the  priest  said  against  Herodotus, 
speaking  truly,  or  not  truly,  or  some- 
times correctly  and  sometimes  not,  as 
often  befalls  mortal  men.  For  Herodo- 
tus, he  said,  was  chiefly  concerned  to 
steal  the  lore  of  those  who  came  before 
him,  such  as  Hecateeus,  and  then  to  es- 
cape notice  as  having  stolen  it.  Also  he 
said  that,  being  himself  cunning  and  de- 
ceitful, Herodotus  was  easily  beg'iiled 
by  the  cunning  of  others,  and  believed 
in  things  manifestly  false,  such  as  the 
story  of  the  Phoenix-bird. 

Then  I  spoke,  and    said   that  Hero- 
dotus himself  declared  that  he  could  not 


44       LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

believe  that  story  ;  but  the  priest  re- 
garded me  not.  And  he  said  that  Hero- 
dotus had  never  caught  a  crocodile  with 
cold  pig,  nor  did  he  ever  visit  Assyria, 
nor  Babylon,  nor  Elephantine  ;  but,  say- 
ing that  he  had  been  in  these  lands, 
said  that  which  was  not  true.  He  also 
declared  that  Herodotus,  when  he  trav- 
elled, knew  none  of  the  Fat  Ones  of  the 
Egyptians,  but  only  those  of  the  baser 
sort.  And  he  called  Herodotus  a  thief 
and  a  beguiler,  and  *  the  same  with  in- 
tent to  deceive,'  as  one  of  their  own 
poets  writes.  And,  to  be  short,  Hero- 
dotus, I  could  not  tell  you  in  one  day 
all  the  charges  which  are  now  brought 
against  you  ;  but  concerning  the  truth 
of  these  things,  you  know,  not  least,  but 
most,  as  to  yourself  being  guilty  or  inno- 
cent. Wherefore,  if  you  have  anything 
to  show  or  set  forth  whereby  you  may 
be  relieved  from  the  burden  of  these 
accusations,  now  is  the  time.  Be  no 
longer  silent ;  but,  whether  through  the 
Oracle   of  the   Dead,  or   the  Oracle  of 


HERODOTUS  45 

Branchidae,  or  that  in  Delphi,  or  Dodona, 
or  of  Amphiaraus  at  Oropus,  speak  to 
your  friends  and  lovers  (whereof  I  am 
one  from  of  old)  and  let  men  know  the 
very  truth. 

Now,  concerning  the  priests  in  the 
City  of  the  Ford  of  the  Ox,  it  is  to  be 
said  that  of  all  men  whom  we  know  they 
receive  strangers  most  gladly,  feasting 
them  all  day.  Moreover,  they  have 
many  drinks,  cunningly  mixed,  and  of 
these  the  best  is  that  they  call  Arch- 
deacon, naming  it  from  one  of  the 
priests'  offices.  Truly,  as  Homer  says 
(if  the  Odyssey  be  Homer's),  *  when  that 
draught  is  poured  into  the  bowl  then  it 
is  no  pleasure  to  refrain.' 

Drinking  of  this  wine,  or  nectar,  He- 
rodotus, I  pledge  you,  and  pour  forth 
some  deal  on  the  ground,  to  Herodotus 
of  Halicarnassus,  in  the  House  of  Hades. 

And  I  wish  you  farewell,  and  good 
be  with  you.  Whether  the  priest  spoke 
truly,  or  not  truly,  even  so  may  such 
good  things  betide  you  as  befall  dead 
men. 


V. 

Epistle  to  Mr.  Alexander  Pope. 

From  mortal  Gratitude,  decide,  my 
Pope, 

Have  Wits  Immortal  more  to  fear  or 
hope  ? 

Wits  toil  and  travail  round  the  Plant  of 
Fame, 

Their  Works  its  Garden,  and  its  Growth 
their  Aim, 

Then  Commentators,  in  unwieldy  Dance, 

Break  down  the  Barriers  of  the  trim 
Pleasance, 

Pursue  the  Poet,  like  Actaeon's  Hounds, 

Beyond  the  fences  of  his  Garden 
Grounds, 

Rend  from  the  singing  Robes  each  bor- 
rowed Gem, 

Rend  from  the  laurel'd  Brows  the  Dia- 
dem, 


POPE  47 

And,  if  one  Rag  of  Character  they  spare, 
Comes   the    Biographer,    and    strips    it 
bare  ! 

Such,  Pope,  has  been  thy  Fortune,  such 

thy  Doom. 
Swift  the  Ghouls  gathered  at  the  Poet's 

Tomb, 
With  Dust  of  Notes  to  clog  each  lordly 

Line, 
Warburton,    Warton,    Croker,    Bowles, 

combine ! 
Collecting  Cackle,  Johnson  condescends 
To    interview     the    Drudges    of     your 

Friends. 
Though  still  your  Courthope  holds  your 

merits   high. 
And  still  proclaims  your  Poems  Poetry, 
Biographers,     un  -  Boswell  -  like,     have 

sneered. 
And  Dunces   edit   him   whom    Dunces 

feared ! 

They  say  ;  what  say  they  ?     Not  in  vain 
You  ask. 


48      LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

To  tell  you  what  they  say,  behold  my 

Task  ! 
'  Methinks  already  I  your  Tears  survey ' 
As  I  repeat '  the  horrid  Things  they  say.'  ^ 

Comes  El — n  first:  I  fancy  you'll  agree 
Not  frenzied  Dennis  smote  so  fell  as  he  ; 
For    El — n's  Introduction,  crabbed  and 

dry. 
Like  Churchill's  Cudgel's ^  marked  with 

Lie,  and  Lie  ! 

*  Too  dull  to  know  what  his  own  System 

meant, 
Pope  yet  was  skilled  new  Treasons  to 

invent ; 
A  Snake  that  puffed  himself  and  stung 

his  Friends, 
Few   Lied   so   frequent,  for  such  little 

Ends  ; 
His  mind,  like  Flesh  inflamed,^  was  raw 

and  sore, 

1  Rape  of  the  Lock. 

2  In  Mr.  Hogarth's  Caricatura. 
8  Elwin's  Pope,  ii.  15. 


POPE  49 

And  still,  the  more  he  writhed,  he  stung 

the  more  ! 
Oft  in  a  Quarrel,  never  in  the  Right, 
His  Spirit  sank  when  he  was  called  to 

fight. 
Pope,  in   the   Darkness   mining  like  a 

Mole, 
Forged  on  Himself,  as  from  Himself  he 

stole, 
And  what  for  Caryll  once  he  feigned  to 

feel, 
Transferred,  in   Letters   never  sent,  to 

Steele  ! 
Still   he    denied    the    Letters    he    had 

writ, 
And  still  mistook  Indecency  for  Wit. 
His    very   Grammar,    so    De    Quincey 

cries, 
"  Detains    the    Reader,    and    at    times 

defies  !  "  ' 

Fierce  El — n  thus  :  no  Line  escapes  his 

Rage, 
And   furious    Foot-notes    growl   'neath 

every  Page : 

4 


50      LETTERS    TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

See    St-ph-n   next    take   up   the  woful 

Tale, 
Prolong  the  Preaching,  and  protract  the 

Wail! 
*  Some    forage     Falsehoods     from     the 

North  and  South, 
But  Pope,  poor  D 1,  lied  from  Hand 

to  Mouth  ;  1 
Affected,  hypocritical,  and  vain, 
A    Book    in  Breeches,   and  a    Fop    in 

Grain  ; 
A  Fox  that  found  not  the  high  Clusters 

sour, 
The  Fanfaron  of  Vice  beyond  his  power. 
Pope  yet  possessed'  —  (the  Praise  will 

make  you  start)  — 
*Mean,  morbid,  vain,  he  yet  possessed 

a  Heart ! 
And  still  we  marvel   at  the   Man,  and 

still 
Admire    his   Finish,    and    applaud    his 

Skill : 

1  '  Poor  Pope  was  always  a  hand-to-mouth  liar.' 
'—Pope,  by  Leslie  Stephen,  139. 


POPE  51 

Though,  as  that  fabled  Barque,  a  phan- 
tom Form, 

Eternal  strains,  nor  rounds  the  Cape  of 
Storm, 

Even  so  Pope  strove,  nor  ever  crossed 
the  Line 

That  from  the  Noble  separates  the 
Fine!' 

The  Learned  thus,  and  who  can  quite 

reply. 
Reverse  the  Judgment,  and  Retort  the 

Lie? 
You  reap,  in  arm^d   Hates  that  haunt 

Your  name. 
Reap  what    you   sowed,   the   Dragon's 

Teeth  of  Fame : 
You  could  not  write,  and  from  unenvi- 

ous  Time 
Expect  the  Wreath  that  crowns  the  lofty 

Rhyme, 
You  still  must  fight,  retreat,  attack,  de- 
fend, 
And   oft,  to   snatch  a  Laurel,  lose    a 

Friend  ! 


52      LETTERS    TO   DEAD  AUTHORS 

The   Pity   of    it  !      And   the   changing 

Taste 
Of    changing   Time    leaves    half    your 

Work  a  Waste ! 
My  Childhood  fled  your  couplet's  clarion 

tone, 
And  sought  for  Homer  in  the  Prose  of 

Bohn. 
Still  through  the  Dust  of  that  dim  Prose 

appears 
The  Flight  of  Arrows  and  the  Sheen  of 

Spears  ; 
Still  we  may  trace  what  Hearts  heroic 

feel, 
And  hear  the  Bronze  that  hurtles  on  the 

Steel ! 
But,    ah,  your    Iliad    seems   a   half-pre- 
tence. 
Where  Wits,  not    Heroes,    prove   their 

Skill  in  Fence, 
And    great    Achilles'    Eloquence    doth 

show 
As  if  no  Centaur  trained  him,  but  Boi- 

leau! 


POPE  53 

Again,   your  Verse    is    orderly,  —  and 

more,  — 
'  The  Waves   behind  impel    the  Waves 

before ; ' 
Monotonously  musical  they  glide, 
Till  Couplet  unto  Couplet  hath  replied. 
But  turn  to  Homer !     How  his  Verses 

sweep ! 
Surge  answers  Surge  and  Deep  doth  call 

on  Deep  ; 
This  Line  in  Foam  and  Thunder  issues 

forth. 
Spurred  by  the  West  or  smitten  by  the 

North, 
Sombre  in  all  its  sullen  Deeps,  and  all 
Clear  at  the  Crest,  and  foaming  to  the 

Fall, 
The  next  with  silver  Murmur  dies  away, 
Like  Tides  that  falter  to  Calypso's  Bay  ! 

Thus  Time,  with   sordid   Alchemy  and 

dread. 
Turns  half  the  Glory  of  your  Gold  to 

Lead ; 
Thus  Time,  —  at  Ronsard's  wreath  that 

vainly  bit,  — 


54      LETTERS    TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

Has  marred   the   Poet   to  preserve  the 

Wit, 
Who  almost  left  on  Addison  a  stain, 
Whose   knife   cut   cleanest  with  a   poi- 
soned pain,  — 
Yet  Thou  (strange  Fate  that  clings  to 

all  of  Thine  !) 
When   most   a  Wit  dost   most  a   Poet 

shine. 
In  Poetry  thy  Dunciad  expires, 
When  Wit   has   shot    'her   momentary 

Fires.' 
*T  is  Tragedy  that  watches  by  the  Bed 
*  Where  tawdry  Yellow  strove  with  dirty 

Red,' 
And  Men,  remembering  all,  can  scarce 

deny 
To  lay  the   Laurel  where  thine  Ashes 

Ue! 


VI. 

To  Luciaii  of  Samosata. 

In  what  bower,  oh  Lucian,  of  your 
rediscovered  Islands  Fortunate  are  you 
now  reclining ;  the  delight  of  the  fair, 
the  learned,  the  witty,  and  the  brave  ? 
In  that  clear  and  tranquil  climate,  whose 
air  breathes  of  'violet  and  lily,  myrtle, 
and  the  flower  of  the  vine/ 

Where  the  daisies  are  rose-scented. 
And  the  Rose  herself  has  got 
Perfume  which  on  earth  is  not, 

among  the  music  of  all  birds,  and  the 
wind-blown  notes  of  flutes  hanging  on 
the  trees,  methinks  that  your  laughter 
sounds  most  silvery  sweet,  and  that 
Helen  and  fair  Charmides  are  still  of 
your  company.  Master  of  mirth,  and 
Soul  the  best  contented  of  all  that  have 
seen  the  world's  ways  clearly,  most  clear- 


56       LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

sighted  of  all  that  have  made  tranquil- 
lity their  bride,  what  other  laughers 
dwell  with  you,  where  the  crystal  and 
fragrant  waters  wander  round  the  shin- 
ing palaces  and  the  temples  of  ame- 
thyst ? 

Heine  surely  is  with  you  ;  if,  indeed, 
it  was  not  one  Syrian  soul  that  dwelt 
among  alien  men,  Germans  and  Romans, 
in  the  bodily  tabernacles  of  Heine  and 
of  Lucian.  But  he  was  fallen  on  evil 
times  and  evil  tongues ;  while  Lucian, 
as  witty  as  he,  as  bitter  in  mockery,  as 
happily  dowered  with  the  magic  of  words, 
lived  long  and  happily  and  honoured, 
imprisoned  in  no  *  mattress-grave.'  With- 
out Rabelais,  without  Voltaire,  without 
Heine,  you  would  find,  methinks,  even 
the  joys  of  your  Happy  Islands  lacking 
in  zest  ;  and,  unless  Plato  came  by  your 
way,  none  of  the  ancients  could  meet 
you  in  the  lists  of  sportive  dialogue. 

There,  among  the  vines  that  bear 
twelve  times  in  the  year,  more  excellent 
than  all  the  vineyards  of  Touraine,  while 


LUCIAN  OF  SAMOSATA  57 

the  song-birds  bring  you  flowers  from 
vales  enchanted,  and  the  shapes  of  the 
Blessed  come  and  go,  beautiful  in  wind- 
woven  raiment  of  sunset  hues  ;  there,  in 
a  land  that  knows  not  age,  nor  winter, 
midnight,  nor  autumn,  nor  noon,  where 
the  silver  twilight  of  summer-dawn  is 
perennial,  where  youth  does  not  wax 
spectre-pale  and  die  ;  there,  my  Lucian, 
you  are  crowned  the  Prince  of  the  Para- 
dise of  Mirth. 

Who  would  bring  you,  if  he  had  the 
power,  from  the  banquet  where  Homer 
sings  :  Homer,  who,  in  mockery  of  com- 
mentators, past  and  to  come,  German 
and  Greek,  informed  you  that  he  was  by 
birth  a  Bab3donian  ?  Yet,  if  you,  who 
first  wrote  Dialogues  of  the  Dead,  could 
hear  the  prayer  of  an  epistle  wafted  to 
'  lands  indiscoverable  in  the  unheard-of 
West,'  you  might  visit  once  more  a  world 
so  worthy  of  such  a  mocker,  so  like  the 
world  you  knew  so  well  of  old. 

Ah,  Lucian,  we  have  need  of  you,  of 
your  sense  and  of  your  mockery  !    Here, 


58     LETTERS    TO  DEAD   AUTHORS 

where  faith  is  sick  and  superstition  is 
waking  afresh  ;  where  gods  come  rarely, 
and  spectres  appear  at  five  shillings  an 
interview  ;  where  science  is  popular,  and 
philosophy  cries  aloud  in  the  market- 
place, and  clamour  does  duty  for  govern- 
ment, and  Thais  and  Lais  are  names  of 
power  —  here,  Lucian,  is  room  and  scope 
for  you.  Can  I  not  imagine  a  new  'Auc- 
tion of  Philosophers,'  and  what  wealth 
might  be  made  by  him  who  bought 
these  popular  sages  and  lecturers  at 
his  estimate,  and  vended  them  at  their 
own  ? 

Hermes  :  Whom  shall  we  put  first  up 
to  auction  ? 

Zeus  :  That  German  in  spectacles ; 
he  seems  a  highly  respectable  man. 

Hermes  :  Ho,  Pessimist,  come  down 
and  let  the  public  view  you. 

Zeus  :  Go  on,  put  him  up  and  have 
done  with  him. 

Hermes  :  Who  bids  for  the  Life  Mis- 
erable, for  extreme,  complete,  perfect, 
unredeemable  perdition  .''     What  offers 


LUCIAN  OF  S AMOS  ATA  59 

for  the  universal  extinction  of  the  spe- 
cies, and  the  collapse  of  the  Conscious  ? 

A  Purchaser  :  He  does  not  look  at 
all  a  bad  lot.  May  one  put  him  through 
his  paces  ? 

Hermes  :  Certainly  ;  try  your  luck. 

Purchaser  :  What  is  your  name  .'' 

Pessimist  :  Hartmann. 

Purchaser  :  What  can  you  teach  me  ? 

Pessimist  :  That  Life  is  not  worth 
Living. 

Purchaser  :  Wonderful !  Most  edi- 
fying !     How  much  for  this  lot } 

Hermes  :  Two  hundred  pounds. 

Purchaser  :  I  will  write  you  a  cheque 
for  the  money.  Come  home,  Pessimist, 
and  begin  your  lessons  without  more 
ado. 

Hermes  :  Attention  !  Here  is  a  mag- 
nificent article  —  the  Positive  Life,  the 
Scientific  Life,  the  Enthusiastic  Life. 
Who  bids  for  a  possible  place  in  the 
Calendar  of  the  Future  .-' 

Purchaser  :  What  does  he  call  him- 
self }  he  has  a  very  French  air. 


60      LETTERS   TO   DEAD  AUTHORS 

Hermes  :  Put  your  own  questions. 

Purchaser  :  What  's  your  pedigree, 
my  Philosopher,  and  previous  perform- 
ances ? 

PosiTiviST  :  I  am  by  Rousseau  out  of 
Catholicism,  with  a  strain  of  the  Evolu- 
tion blood. 

Purchaser  :  What  do  you  believe  in  ? 

PosiTiviST  :  In  Man,  with  a  large  M. 

Purchaser  :  Not  in  individual  Man  ? 

PosiTiviST :  By  no  means  ;  not  even 
always  in  Mr.  Gladstone.  All  men,  all 
Churches,  all  parties,  all  philosophies, 
and  even  the  other  sect  of  our  own 
Church,  are  perpetually  in  the  wrong. 
Buy  me,  and  listen  to  me,  and  you  will 
always  be  in  the  right. 

Purchaser:  And,  after  this  life,  what 
have  you  to  offer  me  .-' 

PosiTiviST  :  A  distinguished  position 
in  the  Choir  Invisible  ;  but  not,  of  course, 
conscious  immortality. 

Purchaser  :  Take  him  away,  and  put 
up  another  lot. 

Then  the  Hegelian,  with  his  Notion, 


LUCIAN  OF  S AMOS  ATA  6l 

and  the  Darwinian,  with  his  notions,  and 
the  Lotzian,  with  his  Broad  Church  mix- 
ture of  Religion  and  Evolution,  and  the 
Spencerian,  with  that  Absolute  which 
is  a  sort  of  a  something,  might  all  be 
offered  with  their  divers  wares  ;  and 
cheaply  enough,  Lucian,  you  would  value 
them  in  this  auction  of  Sects.  *  There 
is  but  one  way  to  Corinth,'  as  of  old  ;  but 
which  that  way  may  be,  oh  master  of 
Hermotimus,  we  know  no  more  than  he 
did  of  old  ;  and  still  we  find,  of  all  phi- 
losophies, that  the  Stoic  route  is  most  to 
be  recommended.  But  we  have  our  Cy- 
renaics  too,  though  they  are  no  longer 
'  clothed  in  purple,  and  crowned  with 
flowers,  and  fond  of  drink  and  of  female 
flute-players.'  Ah,  here  too,  you  might 
laugh,  and  fail  to  see  where  the  Pleasure 
lies,  when  the  Cyrenaics  are  no  'judges 
of  cakes  '  (nor  of  ale,  for  that  matter), 
and  are  strangers  in  the  Courts  of 
Princes.  *  To  despise  all  things,  to  make 
use  of  all  things,  in  all  things  to  follow 
pleasure  only : '  that  is  not  the  manner 


62      LETTERS    TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

of  the  new,  if  it  were  the  secret  of  the 
older  Hedonism. 

Then,  turning  from  the  philosophers 
to  the  seekers  after  a  sign,  what  change, 
Lucian,  would  you  find  in  them  and  their 
ways  ?  None  ;  they  are  quite  unaltered. 
Still  our  Perigrinus,  and  our  Perigrina 
too,  come  to  us  from  the  East,  or,  if 
from  the  West,  they  take  India  on  their 
way — India,  that  secular  home  of  driv- 
elling creeds,  and  of  religion  in  its  sacer- 
dotage.  Still  they  prattle  of  Brahmins 
and  Buddhism  ;  though,  unlike  Peregri- 
nus,  they  do  not  publicly  burn  them- 
selves on  pyres,  at  Epsom  Downs,  after 
the  Derby.  We  are  not  so  fortunate  in 
the  demise  of  our  Theosophists  ;  and 
our  police,  less  wise  than  the  Helleno- 
dicae,  would  probably  not  permit  the  Im- 
molation of  the  Quack.  Like  your  Alex- 
ander, they  deal  in  marvels  and  mira- 
cles, oracles  and  warnings.  All  such 
bogy  stories  as  those  of  your  '  Philo- 
pseudes,'  and  the  ghost  of  the  lady  who 
took  to  table-rapping  because  one  of  her 


LUCIAN  OF  S AMOS  ATA  63 

best  slippers  had  not  been  burned  with 
her  body,  are  gravely  investigated  by  the 
Psychical  Society. 

Even  your  ignorant  Bibliophile  is  still 
with  us  —  the  man  without  a  tinge  of 
letters,  who  buys  up  old  manuscripts 
'because  they  are  stained  and  gnawed, 
and  who  goes,  for  proof  of  valued  an- 
tiquity, to  the  testimony  of  the  book- 
worms.' And  the  rich  BibHophile  now, 
as  in  your  satire,  clothes  his  volumes  in 
purple  morocco  and  gay  doniresy  while 
their  contents  are  sealed  to  him. 

As  to  the  topics  of  satire  and  gay 
curiosity  which  occupy  the  lady  known 
as  '  Gyp,'  and  M.  Halevy  in  his  *  Les 
Petites  Cardinal,'  if  you  had  not  ex- 
hausted the  matter  in  your  *  Dialogues  of 
Hetairai,'  you  would  be  amused  to  find 
the  same  old  traits  surviving  without  a 
touch  of  change.  One  reads,  in  Halevy's 
French,  of  Madame  Cardinal,  and,  in 
your  Greek,  of  the  mother  of  Philinna, 
and  marvels  that  eighteen  hundred  years 
have  not  in  one  single  trifle  altered  the 


54      LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

mould.  Still  the  old  shabby  light-loves, 
the  old  greed,  the  old  luxury  and  squalor. 
Still  the  unconquerable  superstition  that 
now  seeks  to  tell  fortunes  by  the  cards, 
and,  in  your  time,  resorted  to  the  sor- 
ceress with  her  magical  *  bull-roarer  '  or 
turndun} 

Yes,  Lucian,  we  are  the  same  vain 
creatures  of  doubt  and  dread,  of  unbelief 
and  credulity,  of  avarice  and  pretence, 
that  you  knew,  and  at  whom  you  smiled. 
Nay,  our  very  '  social  question  '  is  not 
altered.  Do  you  not  write,  in  'The 
Runaways,'  '  The  artisans  will  abandon 
their  workshops,  and  leave  their  trades, 
when  they  see  that,  with  all  the  labour 
that  bows  their  bodies  from  dawn  to 
dark,  they  make  a  petty  and  starveling 
pittance,  while  men  that  toil  not  nor 
spin  are  floating  in  Pactolus '  .-' 

They  begin   to  see   this   again   as  of 

1  The  Greek  (tSu^oi,  mentioned  by  Lucian  and 
Theocritus,  was  the  magical  weapon  of  the  Austra^ 
lians  —  the  turndun. 


LUC  IAN  OF  S AMOS  AT  A  6$ 

yore  ;  but  whether  the  end  of  their  vis- 
ion will  be  a  laughing  matter,  you,  for- 
tunate Lucian,  do  not  need  to  care.    Hail 
to  you,  and  farewell ! 
5 


VII. 

To  Maitre  Franqoys  Rabelais. 

OF  THE  COMING   OF  THE  COQCIGRUES. 

Master,  —  In  the  Boreal  and  Septen- 
trional lands,  turned  aside  from  the 
noonday  and  the  sun,  there  dwelt  of  old 
(as  thou  knowest,  and  as  Olaus  vouch- 
eth)  a  race  of  men,  brave,  strong,  nim- 
ble, and  adventurous,  who  had  no  other 
care  but  to  fight  and  drink.  There,  by 
reason  of  the  cold  (as  Virgil  witnesseth), 
men  break  wine  with  axes.  To  their 
minds,  when  once  they  were  dead  and 
gotten  to  Valhalla,  or  the  place  of  their 
Gods,  there  would  be  no  other  pleasure 
but  to  swig,  tipple,  drink,  and  boose  till 
the  coming  of  that  last  darkness  and 
Twilight,  wherein  they,  with  their  dei- 
ties, should  do  battle  against  the  enemies 


RABELAIS  6  J 

of  all  mankind;  which  day  they  rather 
desired  than  dreaded. 

So  chanced  it  also  with  Pantagruel 
and  Brother  John  and  their  company, 
after  they  had  once  partaken  of  the  se- 
cret of  the  Dive  Bouteille.  Thereafter 
they  searched  no  longer ;  but,  abiding  at 
their  ease,  were  merry,  frolic,  jolly,  gay, 
glad,  and  wise ;  only  that  they  always 
and  ever  did  expect  the  awful  Coming 
of  the  Coqcigrues.  Now  concerning  the 
day  of  that  coming,  and  the  nature  of 
them  that  should  come,  they  knew  noth- 
ing ;  and  for  his  part  Panurge  was  all 
the  more  adread,  as  Aristotle  testifieth 
that  men  (and  Panurge  above  others) 
most  fear  that  which  they  know  least. 
Now  it  chanced  one  day,  as  they  sat  at 
meat,  with  viands  rare,  dainty,  and  pre- 
cious as  ever  Apicius  dreamed  of,  that 
there  fluttered  on  the  air  a  faint  sound 
as  of  sermons,  speeches,  orations,  ad- 
dresses, discourses,  lectures,  and  the 
like  ;  whereat  Panurge,  pricking  up  his 
ears,  cried, '  Methinks  this  wind  bloweth 


68        LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

from    Midlothian,'  and   so   fell    a  trem- 
bling. 

Next,  to  their  aural  orifices,  and  the 
avenues  audient  of  the  brain,  was  borne 
a  very  melancholy  sound  as  of  harmo- 
niums, hymns,  organ-pianos,  psalteries, 
and  the  like,  all  playing  different  airs,  in 
a  kind  most  hateful  to  the  Muses.  Then 
said  Panurge,  as  well  as  he  might  for 
the  chattering  of  his  teeth :  'May  I  never 
drink  if  here  come  not  the  Coqcigrues!' 
and  this  saying  and  prophecy  of  his  was 
true  and  inspired.  But  thereon  the  oth- 
ers began  to  mock,  flout,  and  gird  at 
Panurge  for  his  cowardice.  '  Here  am 
I ! '  cried  Brother  John,  '  well-armed  and 
ready  to  stand  a  siege  ;  being  entrenched, 
fortified,  hemmed  -  in  and  surrounded 
with  great  pasties,  huge  pieces  of  salted 
beef,  salads,  fricassees,  hams,  tongues, 
pies,  and  a  wilderness  of  pleasant  little 
tarts,  jellies,  pastries,  trifles,  and  fruits 
of  all  kinds,  and  I  shall  not  thirst  while 
I  have  good  wells,  founts,  springs,  and 
sources   of   Bordeaux   wine,    Burgundy, 


RABELAIS  69 

wine  of  the  Champagne  country,  sack 
and  Canary.    A  fig  for  thy  Coqcigrues  ! ' 

But  even  as  he  spoke  there  ran  up 
suddenly  a  whole  legion,  or  rather  army, 
of  physicians,  each  armed  with  laryngo- 
scopes, stethoscopes,  horoscopes,  micro- 
scopes, weighing  machines,  and  such 
other  tools,  engines,  and  arms  as  they 
had  who,  after  thy  time,  persecuted 
Monsieur  de  Pourceaugnac  !  And  they 
all,  rushing  on  Brother  John,  cried  out 
to  him,  *  Abstain  !  Abstain ! '  And  one 
said,  '  I  have  well  diagnosed  thee,  and 
thou  art  in  a  fair  way  to  have  the  gout.' 
*I  never  did  better  in  my  days,'  said 
Brother  John.  '  Away  with  thy  meats 
and  drinks  ! '  they  cried.  And  one  said, 
*  He  must  to  Royat ; '  and  another, 
'  Hence  with  him  to  Aix  ;  *  and  a  third, 
'Banish  him  to  Wiesbaden;'  and  a 
fourth,  '  Hale  him  to  Gastein  ; '  and  yet 
another,  *  To  Barbouille  with  him  in 
chains  ! ' 

And  while  others  felt  his  pulse  and 
looked  at  his  tongue,  they  all  wrofe  pre-- 


70       LETTERS    TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

scriptions  for  him  like  men  mad.  '  For 
thy  eating,*  cried  he  that  seemed  to  be 
their  leader,  '  No  soup  ! '  'No  soup  ! ' 
quoth  Brother  John  ;  and  those  cheeks 
of  his,  whereat  you  might  have  warmed 
your  two  hands  in  the  winter  solstice, 
grew  white  as  lilies.  *  Nay !  and  no  sal- 
mon, nor  any  beef  nor  mutton  !  A  little 
chicken  by  times,  but  periculo  tuo  ! 
Nor  any  game,  such  as  grouse,  partridge, 
pheasant,  capercailzie,  wild  duck ;  nor 
any  cheese,  nor  fruit,  nor  pastry,  nor 
coffee,  nor  eau  de  vie ;  and  avoid  all 
sweets.  No  veal,  pork,  nor  made  dishes 
of  any  kind.'  '  Then  what  may  I  eat  ? ' 
quoth  the  good  Brother,  whose  valour 
had  oozed  out  of  the  soles  of  his  san- 
dals. *  A  little  cold  bacon  at  breakfast 
—  no  eggs,'  quoth  the  leader  of  the 
strange  folk,  '  and  a  slice  of  toast  with- 
out butter.'  '  And  for  thy  drink  '  — 
('  What  > '  gasped  Brother  John)  — '  one 
dessert-spoonful  of  whisky,  with  a  pint 
of  the  water  of  Apollinaris  at  luncheon 
and    dinner.      No     more  !  '      At    this 


RABELAIS  71 

Brother  John  fainted,  falling  like  a 
great  buttress  of  a  hill,  such  as  Tayge- 
tus  or  Erymanthus. 

While  they  were  busy  with  him,  oth- 
ers of  the  frantic  folk  had  built  great 
platforms  of  wood,  whereon  they  all 
stood  and  spoke  at  once,  both  men  and 
women.  And  of  these  some  wore  red 
crosses  on  their  garments,  which  mean- 
eth  *  Salvation  ; '  and  others  wore  white 
crosses,  with  a  little  black  button  of 
crape,  to  signify  '  Purity  ;  '  and  others 
bits  of  blue  to  mean  *  Abstinence.' 
While  some  of  these  pursued  Panurge 
others  did  beset  Pantagruel ;  asking  him 
very  long  questions,  whereunto  he  gave 
but  short  answers.    Thus  they  asked  :  — 

Have  ye  Local  Option  here  ?  —  Pan. : 
What  > 

May  one  man  drink  if  his  neighbour 
be  not  athirst  ?  —  Pan.  :  Yea ! 

Have  ye  Free  Education  ?  —  Pan.  : 
What .? 

Must  they  that  have,  pay  to  school 
them  that  have  not  ?  —  Pan. :  Nay  ! 


72        LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

Have  ye  free  land? — Pan.:  What? 

Have  ye  taken  the  land  from  the 
farmer,  and  given  it  to  the  tailor  out  of 
work  and  the  candlemaker  masterless  ? 

—  Pan.  :  Nay  ! 

Have  your  women  folk  votes  ?  — 
Pan.  :  Bosh  ! 

Have  ye  got   religion  ? —  Pan.  :  How  ? 

Do  you  go  about  the  streets  at  night, 
brawling,  blowing  a  trumpet  before 
you,  and  making  long  prayers  ?  —  Pan.  : 
Nay! 

Have  you  manhood  suffrage?  —  Pan. : 
Eh? 

Is  Jack  as  good  as  his  master  ?  — 
Pan.  :  Nay ! 

Have  you  joined  the  Arbitration  So- 
ciety ?  —  Pan. :  Qiioy  ? 

Will  you  let  another  kick  you,  and 
will  you  ask  his  neighbour  if  you  de- 
serve the  same  ? —  Pan.  :  Nay  ? 

Do  you  eat  what  you  list  ?  —  Pan.  : 
Ay! 

Do  you  drink  when  you  are  athirst  ? 

—  Pan. :  Ay ! 


RABELAIS  73 

Are  you  governed  by  the  free  ex- 
pression of  the  popular  will  ?  —  Pan. : 
How  ? 

Are  you  servants  of  priests,  pulpits, 
and  penny  papers  ?  —  Pan.  :  No  ! 

Now,  when  they  heard  these  answers 
of  Pantagruel  they  all  fell,  some  a  weep- 
ing, some  a  praying,  some  a  swearing, 
some  an  arbitrating,  some  a  lecturing, 
some  a  caucussing,  some  a  preaching, 
some  a  faith-healing,  some  a  miracle- 
working,  some  a  hypnotising,  some  a 
writing  to  the  daily  press  ;  and  while 
they  were  thus  busy,  like  folk  distraught, 
'  reforming  the  island,'  Pantagruel  burst 
out  a  laughing ;  whereat  they  were 
greatly  dismayed ;  for  laughter  killeth 
the  whole  race  of  Coqcigrues,  and  they 
may  not  endure  it. 

Then  Pantagruel  and  his  company 
stole  aboard  a  barque  that  Panurge  had 
ready  in  the  harbour.  And  having  pro- 
visioned her  well  with  store  of  meat  and 
good  drink,  they  set  sail  for  the  king- 
dom of  Entelechy,  where,  having  landed, 


74       LETTERS  TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

they  were  kindly  entreated  ;  and  there 
abide  to  this  day  ;  drinking  of  the  sweet 
and  eating  of  the  fat,  under  the  protec- 
tion of  that  intellectual  sphere  which 
hath  in  all  places  its  centre  and  nowhere 
its  circumference. 

Such  was  their  destiny  ;  there  was 
their  end  appointed,  and  thither  the 
Coqcigrues  can  never  come.  For  all 
the  air  of  that  land  is  full  of  laughter, 
which  killeth  Coqcigrues  ;  and  there 
aboundeth  the  herb  Pantagruelion.  But 
for  thee,  Master  Fran^oys,  thou  art  not 
well  liked  in  this  island  of  ours,  where 
the  Coqcigrues  are  abundant,  very  fierce, 
cruel,  and  tyrannical.  Yet  thou  hast 
thy  friends,  that  meet  and  drink  to  thee 
and  wish  thee  well  wheresoever  thou 
hast  found  \^y  grand  peut-itre. 


VIII. 

To  Jane  Austen. 

Madam,  —  If  to  the  enjoyments  of 
your  present  state  be  lacking  a  view  of 
the  minor  infirmities  or  foibles  of  men, 
I  cannot  but  think  (were  the  thought 
permitted)  that  your  pleasures  are  yet 
incomplete.  Moreover,  it  is  certain  that 
a  woman  of  parts  who  has  once  meddled 
with  literature  will  never  wholly  lose 
her  love  for  the  discussion  of  that  deli- 
cious topic,  nor  cease  to  relish  what  (in 
the  cant  of  our  new  age)  is  styled  '  liter- 
ary shop.'  For  these  reasons  I  attempt 
to  convey  to  you  some  inkling  of  the 
present  state  of  that  agreeable  art  which 
you,  madam,  raised  to  its  highest  pitch 
of  perfection. 

As  to  your  own  works  (immortal,  as 
I  believe),  I  have  but  little  that  is  wholly 


•j6       LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

cheering  to  tell  one  who,  among  women 
of  letters,  was  almost  alone  in  her  free- 
dom from  a  lettered  vanity.  You  are 
not  a  very  popular  author  :  your  volumes 
are  not  found  in  gaudy  covers  on  every 
bookstall ;  or,  if  found,  are  not  perused 
with  avidity  by  the  Emmas  and  Cather- 
ines of  our  generation.  'T  is  not  long 
since  a  blow  was  dealt  (in  the  estimation 
of  the  unreasoning)  at  your  character  as 
an  author  by  the  publication  of  your 
familiar  letters.  The  editor  of  these 
epistles,  unfortunately,  did  not  always 
take  your  witticisms,  and  he  added  oth- 
ers which  were  too  unmistakably  his 
own.  While  the  injudicious  were  disap- 
pointed by  the  absence  of  your  exqui- 
site style  and  humour,  the  wiser  sort 
were  the  more  convinced  of  your  wis- 
dom. In  your  letters  (knowing  your 
correspondents)  you  gave  but  the  small 
personal  talk  of  the  hour,  for  them  suffi- 
cient ;  for  your  books  you  reserved 
matter  and  expression  which  are  imper- 
ishable.     Your    admirers,    if   not   very 


JANE  AUSTEN  'Jf 

numerous,  include  all  persons  of  taste, 
who,  in  your  favour,  are  apt  somewhat 
to  abate  the  rule,  or  shake  off  the  habit, 
which  commonly  confines  them  to  but 
temperate  laudation. 

'Tis  the  fault  of  all  art  to  seem  an- 
tiquated and  faded  in  the  eyes  of  the 
succeeding  generation.  The  manners  of 
your  age  were  not  the  manners  of  to-day, 
and  young  gentlemen  and  ladies  who 
think  Scott  'slow,'  think  Miss  Austen 
'prim'  and  'dreary.'  Yet,  even  could 
you  return  among  us,  I  scarcely  believe 
that,  speaking  the  language  of  the  hour, 
as  you  might,  and  versed  in  its  habits, 
you  would  win  the  general  admiration. 
For  how  tame,  madam,  are  your  charac- 
ters, especially  your  favourite  heroines  ! 
how  limited  the  life  which  you  knew 
and  described  !  how  narrow  the  range  of 
your  incidents  !  how  correct  your  gram- 
mar ! 

As  heroines,  for  example,  you  chose 
ladies  like  Emma,  and  Elizabeth,  and 
Catherine :   women  remarkable   neither 


y8        LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

for  the  brilliance  nor  for  the  degradation 
of  their  birth  ;  women  wrapped  up  in 
their  own  and  the  parish's  concerns,  ig- 
norant of  evil,  as  it  seems,  and  unac- 
quainted with  vain  yearnings  and  inter- 
esting doubts.  Who  can  engage  his 
fancy  v/ith  their  match-makings  and  the 
conduct  of  their  affections,  when  so  many 
daring  and  dazzling  heroines  approach 
and  solicit  his  regard  ? 

Here  are  princesses  dressed  in  white 
velvet  stamped  with  golden  fleurs-de-lys 
—  ladies  with  hearts  of  ice  and  lips  of 
fire,  who  count  their  roubles  by  the  mil- 
lion, their  lovers  by  the  score,  and  even 
their  husbands,  very  often,  in  figures  of 
some  arithmetical  importance.  With 
these  are  the  immaculate  daughters  of 
itinerant  Italian  musicians,  maids  whose 
souls  are  unsoiled  amidst  the  contamina- 
tions of  our  streets,  and  whose  acquain- 
tance with  the  art  of  Phidias  and  Prax- 
iteles, of  Daedalus  and  Scopas,  is  the 
more  admirable,  because  entirely  derived 
from  loving  study  of  the  inexpensive  col- 


JANE   AUSTEN  79 

lections  vended  by  the  plaster-of-Paris 
man  round  the  corner.  When  such 
heroines  are  wooed  by  the  nephews  of 
Dukes,  where  are  your  Emmas  and  Eliz- 
abeths ?  Your  volumes  neither  excite 
nor  satisfy  the  curiosities  provoked  by 
that  modern  and  scientific  fiction,  which 
is  greatly  admired,  I  learn,  in  the  United 
States,  as  well  as  in  France  and  at 
home. 

You  erred,  it  cannot  be  denied,  with 
your  eyes  open.  Knowing  Lydia  and 
Kitty  so  intimately  as  you  did,  why  did 
you  make  of  them  almost  insignificant 
characters  }  With  Lydia  for  a  heroine 
you  might  have  gone  far ;  and,  had  you 
devoted  three  volumes,  and  the  chief  of 
your  time,  to  the  passions  of  Kitty,  you 
might  have  held  your  own,  even  now,  in 
the  circulating  library.  How  Lyddy, 
perched  on  a  corner  of  the  roof,  first 
beheld  her  Wickham  ;  how,  on  her  chal- 
lenge, he  climbed  up  by  a  ladder  to  her 
side  ;  how  they  kissed,  caressed,  swung 
on  gates  together,  met  at  odd  seasons, 


8o        LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

in  Strange  places,  and  finally  eloped  ;  all 
this  might  have  been  put  in  the  mouth 
of  a  jealous  elder  sister,  say  Elizabeth, 
and  you  would  not  have  been  less  popu- 
lar than  several  favourites  of  our  time. 
Had  you  cast  the  whole  narrative  into 
the  present  tense,  and  lingered  lovingly 
over  the  thickness  of  Mary's  legs  and 
the  softness  of  Kitty's  cheeks,  and  the 
blonde  fluffiness  of  Wickham's  whiskers, 
you  would  have  left  a  romance  still  dear 
to  young  ladies. 

Or  again,  you  might  entrance  your 
students  still,  had  you  concentrated  your 
attention  on  Mrs.  Rushworth,  who  eloped 
with  Henry  Crawford.  These  should 
have  been  the  chief  figures  of  '  Mansfield 
Park.'  But  you  timidly  decline  to  tackle 
Passion.  *  Let  other  pens,'  you  write, 
'dwell  on  guilt  and  misery.  I  quit  such 
odious  subjects  as  soon  as  I  can.'  Ah, 
there  is  the  secret  of  your  failure  !  Need 
I  add  that  the  vulgarity  and  narrowness 
of  the  social  circles  you  describe  impair 
your  popularity  ?      I   scarce   remember 


JANE  AUSTEN  8 1 

more  than  one  lady  of  title,  and  but  very 
few  lords  (and  these  unessential)  in  all 
your  tales.  Now,  when  we  all  wish  to 
be  in  society,  we  demand  plenty  of  titles 
in  our  novels,  at  any  rate,  and  we  get 
lords  (and  very  queer  lords)  even  from 
Republican  authors,  born  in  a  country 
which  in  your  time  was  not  renowned 
for  its  literature.  I  have  heard  a  critic 
remark,  with  a  decided  air  of  fashion, 
on  the  brevity  of  the  notice  which  your 
characters  give  each  other  when  they 
offer  invitations  to  dinner.  'An  invita- 
tion to  dinner  next  day  was  despatched,' 
and  this  demonstrates  that  your  acquain- 
tance '  went  out '  very  little,  and  had  but 
few  engagements.  How  vulgar,  too,  is 
one  of  your  heroines,  who  bids  Mr. 
Darcy  '  keep  his  breath  to  cool  his  por- 
ridge.' I  blush  for  Elizabeth  !  It  were 
superfluous  to  add  that  your  characters 
are  debased  by  being  invariably  mere 
members  of  the  Church  of  England  as 
by  law  established.  The  Dissenting  en- 
thusiast, the  open  soul  that  glides  from 
6 


82        LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

Esoteric  Buddhism  to  the  Salvation 
Army,  and  from  the  Higher  Pantheism 
to  the  Higher  Paganism,  we  look  for  in 
vain  among  your  studies  of  character. 
Nay,  the  very  words  I  employ  are  of  un- 
known sound  to  you  ;  so  how  can  you 
help  us  in  the  stress  of  the  soul's  trav- 
ailings  ? 

You  may  say  that  the  soul's  travail- 
ings  are  no  affair  of  yours  ;  proving 
thereby  that  you  have  indeed  but  a 
lowly  conception  of  the  duty  of  the  nov- 
elist. I  only  remember  one  reference, 
in  all  your  works,  to  that  controversy 
which  occupies  the  chief  of  our  attention 
—  the  great  controversy  on  Creation  or 
Evolution.  Your  Jane  Bennet  cries  :  *  I 
have  no  idea  of  there  being  so  much  De- 
sign in  the  world  as  some  persons  imag- 
ine.' Nor  do  you  touch  on  our  mighty 
social  question,  the  Land  Laws,  save 
when  Mrs.  Bennet  appears  as  a  Land 
Reformer,  and  rails  bitterly  against  the 
cruelty  *  of  settling  an  estate  away  from 
a  family  of  five  daughters,  in  favour  of 


JANE  AUSTEN  83 

a  man  whom  nobody  cared  anything 
about.'  There,  madam,  in  that  cruelly 
unjust  performance,  what  a  text  you  had 
for  a  Tendenz-Roman.  Nay,  you  can  al- 
low Kitty  to  report  that  a  Private  had 
been  flogged,  without  introducing  a  chap- 
ter on  Flogging  in  the  Army.  But  you 
formally  declined  to  stretch  your  matter 
out,  here  and  there,  '  with  solemn  spe- 
cious nonsense  about  something  uncon- 
nected with  the  story.'  No  'padding' 
for  Miss  Austen  !  In  fact,  madam,  as 
you  were  born  before  Analysis  came  in, 
or  Passion,  or  Realism,  or  Naturalism,  or 
Irreverence,  or  Religious  Open-minded- 
ness,  you  really  cannot  hope  to  rival 
your  literary  sisters  in  the  minds  of  a 
perplexed  generation.  Your  heroines 
are  not  passionate,  we  do  not  see  their 
red  wet  cheeks,  and  tresses  dishevelled 
in  the  manner  of  our  frank  young  Mae- 
nads. What  says  your  best  successor,  a 
lady  who  adds  fresh  lustre  to  a  name 
that  in  fiction  equals  yours  }  She  says 
of  Miss  Austen :  '  Her  heroines  have  a 


84        LETTERS    TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

Stamp  of  their  own.  They  have  a  certain 
gentle  self-respect  and  humour  and  hard- 
ness of  heart.  .  .  .  Love  with  them  does 
not  mean  a  passion  as  much  as  an  inter- 
est, deep  and  silent.*  I  think  one  pre- 
fers them  so,  and  that  EngHsh women 
should  be  more  Hke  Anne  Elliot  than 
Maggie  Tulliver.  '  All  the  privilege  I 
claim  for  my  own  sex  is  that  of  loving 
longest  when  existence  or  when  hope  is 
gone,'  said  Anne ;  perhaps  she  insisted 
on  a  monopoly  that  neither  sex  has  all 
to  itself.  Ah,  madam,  what  a  relief  it  is 
to  come  back  to  your  witty  volumes,  and 
forget  the  follies  of  to-day  in  those  of 
Mr.  Collins  and  of  Mrs.  Bennet !  How 
fine,  nay,  how  noble  is  your  art  in  its 
delicate  reserve,  never  insisting,  never 
forcing  the  note,  never  pushing  the 
sketch  into  the  caricature  !  You  worked 
without  thinking  of  it,  in  the  spirit  of 
Greece,  on  a  labour  happily  limited,  and 
exquisitely  organised.  'Dear  books,'  we 
say,  with  Miss  Thackeray  —  'dear  books, 


JANE  AUSTEN  85 

bright,  sparkling  with  wit  and  animation, 
in  which  the  homely  heroines  charm, 
the  dull  hours  fly,  and  the  very  bores 
are  enchanting.' 


IX. 

To  Master  Isaak   Walton. 

Father  Isaak,  —  When  I  would  be 
quiet  and  go  angling  it  is  my  custom  to 
carry  in  my  wallet  thy  pretty  book,  '  The 
Compleat  Angler.'  Here,  methinks,  if 
I  find  not  trout  I  shall  find  content, 
and  good  company,  and  sweet  songs,  fair 
milkmaids,  and  country  mirth.  For  you 
are  to  know  that  trout  be  now  scarce, 
and  whereas  he  was  ever  a  fearful  fish, 
he  hath  of  late  become  so  wary  that 
none  but  the  cunningest  anglers  may  be 
even  with  him. 

It  is  not  as  it  was  in  your  time.  Fa- 
ther, when  a  man  might  leave  his  shop 
in  Fleet  Street,  of  a  holiday,  and,  when 
he  had  stretched  his  legs  up  Tottenham 
Hill,  come  lightly  to  meadows  chequered 
with  waterlilies  and  lady-smocks,  and  so 


ISAAK  WALTON  87 

fall  to  his  sport.  Nay,  now  have  the 
houses  so  much  increased,  like  a  spread- 
ing sore  (through  the  breaking  of  that 
excellent  law  of  the  Conscientious  King 
and  blessed  Martyr,  whereby  building 
beyond  the  walls  was  forbidden),  that  the 
meadows  are  all  swallowed  up  in  streets. 
And  as  to  the  River  Lea,  wherein  you 
took  many  a  good  trout,  I  read  in  the 
news  sheets  that  '  its  bed  is  many  inches 
thick  in  horrible  filth,  and  the  air  for 
more  than  half  a  mile  on  each  side  of  it 
is  polluted  with  a  horrible,  sickening 
stench,'  so  that  we  stand  in  dread  of  a 
new  Plague,  called  the  Cholera.  And 
so  it  is  all  about  London  for  many  miles, 
and  if  a  man,  at  heavy  charges,  betake 
himself  to  the  fields,  lo  you,  folk  are 
grown  so  greedy  that  none  will  suffer 
a  stranger  to  fish  in  his  water. 

So  poor  anglers  are  in  sore  straits. 
Unless  a  man  be  rich  and  can  pay  great 
rents,  he  may  not  fish,  in  England,  and 
hence  spring  the  discontents  of  the 
times,  for  the  angler  is  full  of  content,  if 


88        LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

he  do  but  take  trout,  but  if  he  be  driven 
from  the  waterside,  he  falls,  perchance, 
into  evil  company,  and  cries  out  to  di- 
vide the  property  of  the  gentle  folk.  As 
many  now  do,  even  among  Parliament- 
men,  whom  you  loved  not,  Father  Isaak, 
neither  do  I  love  them  more  than  Rea- 
son and  Scripture  bid  each  of  us  be 
kindly  to  his  neighbour.  But,  behold,  the 
causes  of  the  ill  content  are  not  yet  all 
expressed,  for  even  where  a  man  hath 
licence  to  fish,  he  will  hardly  take  trout 
in  our  age,  unless  he  be  all  the  more 
cunning.  For  the  fish,  harried  this  way 
and  that  by  so  many  of  your  disciples,  is 
exceeding  shy  and  artful,  nor  will  he  bite 
at  a  fly  unless  it  falleth  lightly,  just 
above  his  mouth,  and  floateth  dry  over 
him,  for  all  the  world  like  the  natural 
ephemeris.  And  we  may  no  longer  angle 
with  worm  for  him,  nor  with  penk  or 
minnow,  nor  with  the  natural  fly,  as  was 
your  manner,  but  only  with  the  artificial, 
for  the  more  difficulty  the  more  diver- 
sion.    For  my  part  I  may  cry,  like  Via- 


ISAAK  WALTON  89 

tor  in  your  book,  '  Master,  I  can  neither 
catch  with  the  first  nor  second  Angle :  I 
have  no  fortune.' 

So  we  fare  in  England,  but  somewhat 
better  north  of  the  Tweed,  where  trout 
are  less  wary,  but  for  the  most  part 
small,  except  in  the  extreme  rough  north, 
among  horrid  hills  and  lakes.  Thither, 
Master,  as  methinks  you  may  remember, 
went  Richard  Franck,  that  called  him- 
self Philanthropus,  and  was,  as  it  were, 
the  Columbus  of  anglers,  discovering  for 
them  a  new  Hyperborean  world.  But 
Franck,  doubtless,  is  now  an  angler  in 
the  Lake  of  Darkness,  with  Nero  and 
other  tyrants,  for  he  followed  after  Crom- 
well, the  man  of  blood,  in  the  old  riding 
days.  How  wickedly  doth  Franck  boast 
of  that  leader  of  the  giddy  multitude, 
'when  they  raged,  and  became  restless 
to  find  out  misery  for  themselves  and 
others,  and  the  rabble  would  herd  them- 
selves together,'  as  you  said,  'and  en- 
deavour to  govern  and  act  in  spite  of  au- 
thority.'    So  you  wrote  ;  and  what  said 


90        LETTERS    TO   DEAD  AUTHORS 

Franck,  that  recreant  angler  ?  Doth  he 
not  praise  '  Ireton,  Vane,  Nevill,  and 
Martin,  and  the  most  renowned,  valor- 
ous, and  victorious  conqueror,  Oliver 
Cromwell.'  Natheless,  with  all  his  sins 
on  his  head,  this  Franck  discovered 
Scotland  for  anglers,  and  my  heart  turns 
CO  him  when  he  praises  'the  glittering 
and  resolute  streams  of  Tweed.' 

In  those  wilds  of  Assynt  and  Loch 
Rannoch,  Father,  we,  thy  followers,  may 
yet  take  trout,  and  forget  the  evils  of 
the  times.  But,  to  be  done  with  Franck, 
how  harshly  he  speaks  of  thee  and  thy 
book.  '  For  you  may  dedicate  your  opin- 
ion to  what  scribbling  putationer  you 
please  ;  the  Compleat  Angler  if  you  will, 
who  tells  you  of  a  tedious  fly  story,  ex- 
travagantly collected  from  antiquated 
authors,  such  as  Gesner  and  Dubravius.' 
Again,  he  speaks  of  '  Isaac  Walton, 
whose  authority  to  me  seems  alike  au- 
thentick,  as  is  the  general  opinion  of  the 
vulgar  prophet,'  &c. 

Certain  I  am  that  Franck,  if  a  better 


ISAAK  WALTOAT  9I 

angler  than  thou,  was  a  worse  man,  who, 
writing  his  '  Dialogues  Piscatorial '  or 
'  Northern  Memoirs  '  five  years  after  the 
world  welcomed  thy  *  Compleat  Angler,' 
was  jealous  of  thy  favour  with  the  peo- 
ple, and,  may  be,  hated  thee  for  thy  loy- 
alty and  sound  faith.  But,  Master,  like 
a  peaceful  man  avoiding  contention, 
thou  didst  never  answer  this  blustering 
Franck,  but  wentest  quietly  about  thy 
quiet  Lea,  and  left  him  his  roaring  Brora 
and  windy  Assynt.  How  could  this 
noisy  man  know  thee — and  know  thee 
he  did,  having  argued  with  thee  in  Staf- 
ford —  and  not  love  Isaak  Walton  ?  A 
pedant  angler,  I  call  him,  a  plaguy  an- 
gler, so  let  him  huff  away,  and  turn  we 
to  thee  and  to  thy  sweet  charm  in  fish- 
ing for  men. 

How  often,  studying  in  thy  book,  have 
I  hummed  to  myself  that  of  Horace  — 

Laudis  amore  tumes  ?     Sunt  ccrta  piacula  qua  tc 
Ter  pure  lecto  poterunt  recreare  libello. 

So  healing  a  book  for  the  frenzy  of  fame 


92       LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

is  thy  discourse  on  meadows,  and  pure 
streams,  and  the  country  life.  How 
peaceful,  men  say,  and  blessed  must 
have  been  the  life  of  this  old  man,  how 
lapped  in  content,  and  hedged  about  by 
his  own  humility  from  the  world  !  They 
forget,  who  speak  thus,  that  thy  years, 
which  were  many,  were  also  evil,  or 
would  have  seemed  evil  to  divers  that 
had  tasted  of  thy  fortunes.  Thou  wert 
poor,  but  that,  to  thee,  was  no  sorrow, 
for  greed  of  money  was  thy  detestation. 
Thou  wert  of  lowly  rank,  in  an  age  when 
gentle  blood  was  alone  held  in  regard ; 
yet  thy  virtues  made  thee  hosts  of  friends, 
and  chiefly  among  religious  men,  bish- 
ops, and  doctors  of  the  Church.  Thy  pri- 
vate life  was  not  unacquainted  with  sor- 
row ;  thy  first  wife  and  all  her  fair  chil- 
dren were  taken  from  thee  like  flowers 
in  spring,  though,  in  thine  age,  new  love 
and  new  offspring  comforted  thee  like 
'the  primrose  of  the  later  year.'  Thy 
private  griefs  might  have  made  thee  bit- 
ter, or  melancholy,  so  might  the  sorrows 


ISAAJiT  WALTON  93 

of  the  State  and  of  the  Church,  which 
were  deprived  of  their  heads  by  cruel 
men,  despoiled  of  their  wealth,  the  pious 
driven,  like  thee,  from  their  homes  ;  fear 
everywhere,  everywhere  robbery  and 
confusion  :  all  this  ruin  might  have  an- 
gered another  temper.  But  thou.  Fa- 
ther, didst  bear  all  with  so  much  sweet- 
ness as  perhaps  neither  natural  temper- 
ament, nor  a  firm  faith,  nor  the  love  of 
angling  could  alone  have  displayed.  For 
we  see  many  anglers  (as  witness  Richard 
Franck  aforesaid)  who  are  angry  men, 
and  myself,  when  I  get  my  hooks  entan- 
gled at  every  cast  in  a  tree,  have  come 
nigh  to  swear  prophane. 

Also  we  see  religious  men  that  are 
sour  and  fanatical,  no  rare  thing  in  the 
party  that  professes  godliness.  But  nei- 
ther private  sorrow  nor  public  grief  could 
abate  thy  natural  kindliness,  nor  shake  a 
religion  which  was  not  untried,  but  had, 
indeed,  passed  through  the  furnace  like 
fine  gold.  For  if  we  find  not  Faith  at 
all  times  easy,  because  of  the  oppositions 


94      LETTERS    TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

of  Science,  and  the  searching  curiosity 
of  men's  minds,  neither  was  Faith  a  mat- 
ter of  course  in  thy  day.  For  the  learned 
and  pious  were  greatly  tossed  about,  like 
worthy  Mr.  Chillingworth,  by  doubts  wa- 
vering between  the  Church  of  Rome  and 
the  Reformed  Church  of  England.  The 
humbler  folk,  also,  were  invited,  now 
here,  now  there,  by  the  clamours  of  fa- 
natical Nonconformists,  who  gave  them- 
selves out  to  be  somebody,  while  Athe- 
ism itself  was  not  without  many  to  wit- 
ness to  it.  Therefore,  such  a  religion  as 
thine  was  not,  so  to  say,  a  mere  innocence 
of  evil  in  the  things  of  our  Belief,  but  a 
reasonable  and  grounded  faith,  strong 
in  despite  of  oppositions.  Happy  was 
the  man  in  whom  temper,  and  religion, 
and  the  love  of  the  sweet  country  and 
an  angler's  pastime  so  conveniently  com- 
bined ;  happy  the  long  life  which  held 
in  its  hand  that  threefold  clue  through 
the  labyrinth  of  human  fortunes  !  Around 
thee  Church  and  State  might  fall  in 
ruins,  and  might  be  rebuilded,  and  thy 


ISAAJC  WALTON  95 

tears  would  not  be  bitter,  nor  thy  tri- 
umph cruel. 
Thus,  by  God's  blessing,  it  befell  thee 

Nee  turpent  senectam 
Degere,  nee  cithara  carentem. 

I  would,  Father,  that  I  could  get  at  the 
verity  about  thy  poems.  Those  recom- 
mendatory verses  with  which  thou  didst 
grace  the  Lives  of  Dr.  Donne  and  others 
of  thy  friends,  redound  more  to  the  praise 
of  thy  kind  heart  than  thy  fancy.  But 
what  or  whose  was  the  pastoral  poem 
of  'Thealma  and  Clearchus,'  which  thou 
didst  set  about  printing  in  1678,  and 
gavest  to  the  world  in  1683  }  Thou 
gavest  John  Chalkhill  for  the  author's 
name,  and  a  John  Chalkhill  of  thy  kin- 
dred died  at  Winchester,  being  eighty 
years  of  his  age,  in  1679.  Now  thou 
speakest  of  John  Chalkhill  as  '  a  friend 
of  Edmund  Spenser's,'  and  how  could 
this  be } 

Are  they  right  who  hold  that  John 
Chalkhill  was  but  a  name  of  a  friend, 
borrowed  by  thee  out  of  modesty,  and 


96     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

used  as  a  cloak  to  cover  poetry  of  thine 
own  inditing  ?  When  Mr.  Flatman  writes 
of  Chalkhill,  't  is  in  words  well  fitted  to 
thine  own  merit : 

Happy  old  man,  whose  worth  all  mankind  knows 
Except  himself,  who  charitably  shows 
The  ready  road  to  virtue  and  to  praise, 
The  road  to  many  long  and  happy  days. 

However  it  be,  in  that  road,  by  quiet 
streams  and  through  green  pastures, 
thou  didst  walk  all  thine  almost  century 
of  years,  and  we,  who  stray  into  thy 
path  out  of  the  highway  of  life,  we  seem 
to  hold  thy  hand,  and  listen  to  thy  cheer- 
ful voice.  If  our  sport  be  worse,  may 
our  content  be  equal,  and  our  praise, 
therefore,  none  the  less.  Father,  if  Mas- 
ter Stoddard,  the  great  fisher  of  Tweed- 
side,  be  with  thee,  greet  him  for  me,  and 
thank  him  for  those  songs  of  his,  and 
perchance  he  will  troll  thee  a  catch  of 
our  dear  River. 

Tweed  !  winding  and  wild  !  where  the   heart  is  un- 
bound. 
They  know  not,  they  dream  not,  who  linger  around, 
How  the  saddened  will  smile,  and  the  wasted  rewin 
From  thee  —  the  bliss  withered  within. 


ISAAK  WALTON  97 

Or  perhaps  thou  wilt  better  love, 

The  lanesome  Tala  and  the  Lyne, 

And  Mahon  wi'  its  mountain  rills, 
An'  Etterick,  whose  waters  twine 

Wi'  Yarrow  frae  the  forest  hills  ; 
An'  Gala,  too,  and  Teviot  bright. 

An'  mony  a  stream  o'  playfu'  speed, 
Their  kindred  valleys  a'  unite 

Amang  the  braes  o'  bonnie  Tweed  I 

So,  Master,  may  you  sing  against  each 
other,  you  two  good  old  anglers,  like 
Peter  and  Corydon,  that  sang  in  your 
golden  age. 

7 


X. 

To  M.  Chapelain. 

Monsieur,  —  You  were  a  popular  wri- 
ter, and  an  honourable,  over  -  educated, 
upright  gentleman.  Of  the  latter  char- 
acter you  can  never  be  deprived,  and 
I  doubt  not  it  stands  you  in  better 
stead  where  you  are,  than  the  laurels 
which  flourished  so  gaily,  and  faded  so 
soon. 

Laurel  is  green  for  a  season,  and  Love  is  fair  for  a 
day, 

But  Love  grows  bitter  with  treason,  and  laurel  out- 
lives not  May. 

I  know  not  if  Mr.  Swinburne  is  cor- 
rect in  his  botany,  but  your  laurel  cer- 
tainly outlived  not  May,  nor  can  we 
hope  that  you  dwell  where  Orpheus  and 
where  Homer  are.  Some  other  crown, 
some  other  Paradise,  we  cannot  doubt 
it,  awaited  icn  si  bon  honwie.      But  the 


CHAPELAIN  99 

moral  excellence  that  even  Boileau  ad- 
mitted, la  foi,  riiomteur,  la  probity,  do 
not  in  Parnassus  avail  the  popular  poet, 
and  some  luckless  Musset  or  Theophile, 
Regnier  or  Villars  attains  a  kind  of  im- 
mortality denied  to  the  man  of  many 
contemporary  editions,  and  of  a  great 
commercial  success. 

If  ever,  for  the  confusion  of  Horace, 
any  Poet  was  Made,  you,  Sir,  should 
have  been  that  fortunately  manufactured 
article.  You  virere,  in  matters  of  the 
Muses,  the  child  of  many  prayers. 
Never,  since  Adam's  day,  have  any  par- 
ents but  yours  prayed  for  a  poet-child. 
Then  Destiny,  that  mocks  the  desires 
of  men  in  general,  and  fathers  in  partic- 
ular, heard  the  appeal,  and  presented  M. 
Chapelain  and  Jeanne  Corbi^re  his  vrife 
with  the  future  author  of  *  La  Pucelle.' 
Oh  futile  hopes  of  men,  O  pcctora  C(2ca  ! 
All  was  done  that  education  could  do  for 
a  genius  which,  among  other  qualities, 
'especially  lacked  fire  and  imagination,' 
and  an  ear  for  verse  —  sad  defects  these 


lOO     LETTERS   TO  DEAD   AUTHORS 

in  a  child  of  the  Muses.  Your  training 
in  all  the  mechanics  and  metaphysics  of 
criticism  might  have  made  you  exclaim, 
like  Rasselas,  '  Enough  !  Thou  hast 
convinced  me  that  no  human  being  can 
ever  be  a  Poet.'  Unhappily,  you  suc- 
ceeded in  convincing  Cardinal  Riche- 
lieu that  to  be  a  Poet  was  well  within 
your  powers,  you  received  a  pension  of 
one  thousand  crowns,  and  were  made 
Captain  of  the  Cardinal's  minstrels,  as 
M.  de  Treville  was  Captain  of  the  King's 
Musketeers. 

Ah,  pleasant  age  to  live  in,  when  good 
intentions  in  poetry  were  more  richly 
endowed  than  ever  is  Research,  even 
Research  in  Prehistoric  English,  among 
us  niggard  moderns !  How  I  wish  I 
knew  a  Cardinal,  or,  even  as  you  did,  a 
Prime  Minister,  who  would  praise  and 
pension  me ;  but  Envy  be  still  !  Your 
existence  was  more  happy  indeed  ;  you 
constructed  odes,  corrected  sonnets,  pre- 
sided at  the  Hotel  Rambouillet,  while 
the  learned  ladies  were  still  young  and 


CHAPE  LA  IN  1 01 

fair,  and  you  enjoyed  a  prodigious  ce- 
lebrity on  the  score  of  your  yet  unpub- 
lished Epic.  *  Who,  indeed,'  says  a  sym- 
pathetic author,  M.  Theophile  Gautier, 
*  who  could  expect  less  than  a  miracle 
from  a  man  so  deeply  learned  in  the 
laws  of  art  —  a  perfect  Turk  in  the  sci- 
ence of  poetry,  a  person  so  well  pen- 
sioned, and  so  favoured  by  the  great  ? ' 
Bishops  and  politicians  combined  in  per- 
fect good  faith  to  advertise  your  merits. 
Hard  must  have  been  the  heart  that 
could  resist  the  testimonials  of  your  skill 
as  a  poet  offered  by  the  Due  de  Mon- 
tausier,  and  the  learned  Huet,  Bishop  of 
Avranches,  and  Monseigneur  Godeau, 
Bishop  of  Vence,  or  M.  Colbert,  who 
had  such  a  genius  for  finance. 

If  bishops  and  politicians  and  prime 
ministers  skilled  in  finance,  and  some 
critics.  Menage  and  Sarrazin  and  Vau- 
getas,  if  ladies  of  birth  and  taste,  if  all 
the  world  in  fact,  combined  to  tell  you 
that  you  were  a  great  poet,  how  can  we 
blame  you  for  taking  yourself  seriously. 


102     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

and  appraising  yourself  at  the  public 
estimate  ? 

It  was  not  in  human  nature  to  resist 
the  evidence  of  the  bishops  especially, 
and  when  every  minor  poet  believes  in 
himself  on  the  testimony  of  his  own  con- 
ceit, you  may  be  acquitted  of  vanity  if 
you  listened  to  the  plaudits  of  your 
friends.  Nay,  you  ventured  to  pro- 
nounce judgment  on  contemporaries 
whom  Posterity  has  preferred  to  your 
perfections.  '  Moli^re,'  said  you,  '  un- 
derstands the  nature  of  comedy,  and 
presents  it  in  a  natural  style.  The  plot 
of  his  best  pieces  is  borrowed,  but  not 
without  judgment  ;  his  morale  is  fair, 
and  he  has  only  to  avoid  scurrility.' 

Excellent,  unconscious,  popular  Cha- 
pelain  ! 

Of  yourself  you  observed,  in  a  Report 
on  contemporary  literature,  that  your 
'courage  and  sincerity  never  allowed 
you  to  tolerate  work  not  absolutely 
good.*  And  yet  you  regarded  *  La  Pu- 
celle '  with  some  complacency. 


CHAPELAIN  103 

On  the  '  Pucelle '  you  were  occupied 
during  a  generation  of  mortal  men.  I 
marvel  not  at  the  length  of  your  labours, 
as  you  received  a  yearly  pension  till  the 
Epic  was  finished,  but  your  Muse  was  no 
Alcmena,  and  no  Hercules  was  the  re- 
sult of  that  prolonged  night  of  creations. 
First  you  gravely  wrote  out  (it  was  the 
task  of  five  years)  all  the  compositions  in 
prose.  Ah,  why  did  you  not  leave  it  in 
that  commonplace  but  appropriate  me- 
dium }  What  says  the  Precieuse  about 
you  in  Boileau's  satire  } 

In  Chapelain,  for  all  his  foes  have  said, 

She  finds  but  one  defect,  he  can't  be  read  ; 

Yet  thinks  the  world  might  taste  his  maiden's  woes, 

If  only  he  would  turn  his  verse  to  prose  ! 

The  verse  had  been  prose,  and  prose, 
perhaps,  it  should  have  remained.  Yet 
for  this  precious  *  Pucelle,'  in  the  age 
when  '  Paradise  Lost '  was  sold  for  five 
pounds,  you  are  believed  to  have  re- 
ceived about  four  thousand.  Horace  was 
wrong,  mediocre  poets  may  exist  (now 
and  then),  and  he  was  a  wise  man  who 


104     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

first  spoke  of  aurea  vtediocritas.  At 
length  the  great  work  was  achieved,  a 
work  thrice  blessed  in  its  theme,  that 
divine  Maiden  to  whom  France  owes  all, 
and  whom  you  and  Voltaire  have  recom- 
pensed so  strangely.  In  folio,  in  italics, 
with  a  score  of  portraits  and  engravings, 
and  culs  de  lavipe,  the  great  work  was 
given  to  the  world,  and  had  a  success. 
Six  editions  in  eighteen  months  are  fig- 
ures which  fill  the  poetic  heart  with  envy 
and  admiration.  And  then,  alas  !  the 
bubble  burst.  A  great  lady,  Madame  de 
Longveille,  hearing  the  '  Pucelle '  read 
aloud,  murmured  that  it  was  '  perfect 
indeed,  but  perfectly  wearisome.'  Then 
the  satires  began,  and  the  satirists  never 
left  you  till  your  poetic  reputation  was  a 
rag,  till  the  mildest  Abbe  at  Menage's 
had  his  cheap  sneer  for  Chapelain. 

I  make  no  doubt,  Sir,  that  envy  and 
jealousy  had  much  to  do  with  the  on- 
slaught on  your  '  Pucelle.'  These  quali- 
ties, alas,!  are  not  strange  to  literary 
minds  ;   does  not  even   Hesiod   tell   us 


CHAPELAIN  105 

that  '  potter  hates  potter,  and  poet  hates 
poet '  ?  But  contemporary  spites  do  not 
harm  true  genius.  Who  suffered  more 
than  Moliere  from  cabals  ?  Yet  neither 
the  court  nor  the  town  ever  deserted 
him,  and  he  is  still  the  joy  of  the  world. 
I  admit  that  his  adversaries  were  weaker 
than  yours.  What  were  Boursault  and 
Le  Boulanger,  and  Thomas  Corneille  and 
De  Vise,  what  were  they  all  compared 
to  your  enemy,  Boileau  ?  Brossette  tells 
a  story  which  really  makes  a  man  pity 
you.  There  was  a  M.  de  Puimorin  who, 
to  be  in  the  fashion,  laughed  at  your 
once  popular  Epic.  *  It  is  all  very  well 
for  a  man  to  laugh  who  cannot  even 
read.'  Whereon  M.  de  Puimorin  replied  : 
*  Qu'il  n'avoit  que  trop  sil  lire,  depuis 
que  Chapelain  s'etoit  avise  de  faire  im- 
primer.'  A  new  horror  had  been  added 
to  the  accomplishment  of  reading  since 
Chapelain  had  published.  This  repar- 
tee was  applauded,  and  M.  de  Puimorin 
<Lried  to  turn  it  into  an  epigram.  He  did 
complete  the  last  couplet, 


I06     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

Helas  !  pour  mes  peches,  je  n'ai  sfl  que  trop  lire 
Depuis  que  tu  fais  imprimer. 

But  by  no  labour  would  M.  de  Pui- 
morin  achieve  the  first  two  lines  of  his 
epigram.  Then  you  remember  what 
great  allies  came  to  his  assistance.  I 
almost  blush  to  think  that  M.  Despreaux, 
M.  Racine,  and  M.  de  Moliere,  the  three 
most  renowned  wits  of  the  time,  con- 
spired to  complete  the  poor  jest,  and 
madden  you.  Well,  bubble  as  your 
poetry  was,  you  may  be  proud  that  it 
needed  all  these  sharpest  of  pens  to 
prick  the  bubble.  Other  poets,  as  pop- 
ular as  you,  have  been  annihilated  by  an 
article.  Macaulay  puts  forth  his  hand, 
and  '  Satan  Montgomery '  was  no  more. 
It  did  not  need  a  Macaulay,  the  laughter 
of  a  mob  of  little  critics  was  enough  to 
blow  into  space  ;  but  you  probably  have 
met  Montgomery,  and  of  contemporary 
failures  or  successes  I  do  not  speak. 

I  wonder,  sometimes,  whether  the  con- 
sensus of  criticism  ever  made  you  doubt 
for   a   moment   whether,  after   all,  you 


CHAFE  LA  IN  10/ 

were  not  a  false  child  of  Apollo  ?  Was 
your  complacency  tortured,  as  the  com- 
placency of  true  poets  has  occasionally 
been,  by  doubts  ?  Did  you  expect  pos- 
terity to  reverse  the  verdict  of  the  satir- 
ists, and  to  do  you  justice  ?  You  an- 
swered your  earliest  assailant,  Liniere, 
and,  by  a  few  changes  of  words,  turned 
his  epigrams  into  flattery.  But  I  fancy, 
on  the  whole,  you  remained  calm,  un- 
moved, wrapped  up  in  admiration  of 
yourself.  According  to  M.  de  Marivaux, 
who  reviewed,  as  I  am  doing,  the  spirits 
of  the  mighty  dead,  you  '  conceived,  on 
the  strength  of  your  reputation,  a  great 
and  serious  veneration  for  yourself  and 
your  genius.'  Probably  you  were  pro- 
tected by  this  invulnerable  armour  of  an 
honest  vanity,  probably  you  declared 
that  mere  jealousy  dictates  the  lines  of 
Boileau,  and  that  Chapelain's  real  fault 
was  his  popularity,  and  his  pecuniary 
success, 

Qu'il  soit  le  mieux  rente  de  tous  les  beaux-esprits. 

This,  you  would   avow,  was  your  of- 


I08     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

fence,  and  perhaps  you  were  not  alto- 
gether mistaken.  Yet  posterity  decUnes 
to  read  a  line  of  yours,  and,  as  we  think 
of  you,  we  are  again  set  face  to  face  with 
that  eternal  problem,  how  far  is  popular- 
ity a  test  of  poetry  ?  Burns  was  a  poet, 
and  popular.  Byron  was  a  popular  poet, 
and  the  world  agrees  in  the  verdict  of 
their  own  generation.  But  Montgomery, 
though  he  sold  so  well,  was  no  poet,  nor, 
Sir,  I  fear,  was  your  verse  made  of  the 
stuff  of  immortality.  Criticism  cannot 
hurt  what  is  truly  great  ;  the  Cardinal 
and  the  Academy  left  Chimene  as  fair 
as  ever,  and  as  adorable.  It  is  only 
pinchbeck  that  perishes  under  the  acids 
of  satire :  gold  defies  them.  Yet  I  some- 
times ask  myself,  does  the  existence  of 
popularity  like  yours  justify  the  malig- 
nity of  satire,  which  blesses  neither  him 
who  gives,  nor  him  who  takes }  Are 
poisoned  arrows  fair  against  a  bad  poet } 
I  doubt  it,  Sir,  holding  that,  even  un- 
pricked,  a  poetic  bubble  must  soon  burst 
by  its  own  nature.     Yet  satire  will  as- 


CHAPELAIN  109 

suredly  be  written  so  long  as  bad  poets 
are  successful,  and  bad  poets  will  assur- 
edly reflect  that  their  assailants  are 
merely  envious,  and,  while  their  vogue 
lasts,  that  Prime  Ministers  and  the  pur- 
chasing public  are  the  only  judges. 
Monsieur, 
Votre  tr^s  humble  serviteur, 

Andrew  Lang. 


XL 

To  Sir  yohn  Manndevilhy  Kt. 

(of  the  ways  into  ynde.) 

Sir  John,  —  Wit  you  well  that  men 
holden  you  but  light,  and  some  clepen 
you  a  Liar.  And  they  say  that  you 
never  were  born  in  Englond,  in  the  town 
of  Seynt  Albones,  nor  have  seen  and 
gone  through  manye  diverse  Londes. 
And  there  goeth  an  old  knight  at  arms, 
and  one  that  connes  Latyn,  and  hath 
been  beyond  the  sea,  and  hath  seen 
Prester  John's  country.  And  he  hath 
been  in  an  Yle  that  men  clepen  Burmah, 
and  there  bin  women  bearded.  Now 
men  call  him  Colonel  Henry  Yule,  and 
he  hath  writ  of  thee  in  his  great  booke, 
Sir  John,  and  he  holds  thee  but  lightly. 
For  he  saith  that  ye  did  pill  your  tales 
out  of  Odoric  his  book,  and  that  ye  never 


SIR  JOHN  MANNDEVILLE  III 

saw  snails  with  shells  as  big  as  houses, 
nor  never  met  no  Devyls,  but  part  of 
that  ye  say,  ye  took  it  out  of  William  of 
Boldensele  his  book,  yet  ye  took  not  his 
wisdom,  withal,  but  put  in  thine  own 
foolishness.  Nevertheless,  Sir  John,  for 
the  frailty  of  Mankynde,  ye  are  held  a 
good  fellow,  and  a  merry ;  so  now,  come, 
I  shall  tell  you  of  the  new  ways  into 
Ynde. 

In  that  Lond  they  have  a  Queen  that 
governeth  all  the  Lond,  and  all  they  ben 
obeyssant  to  her.  And  she  is  the  Queen 
of  Englond  ;  for  Englishmen  have  taken 
all  the  Lond  of  Ynde.  For  they  were 
right  good  werryoures  of  old,  and  wyse, 
noble,  and  worthy.  But  of  late  hath 
risen  a  new  sort  of  Englishman  very 
puny  and  fearful,  and  these  men  clepen 
Radicals.  And  they  go  ever  in  fear,  and 
they  scream  on  high  for  dread  in  the 
streets  and  the  houses,  and  they  fain 
would  flee  away  from  all  that  their  fathers 
gat  them  with  the  sword.  And  this  sort 
men  call  Scuttleres,  but  the  mean  folk 


112     LETTERS    TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

and  certain  of  the  womenkind  hear  them 
gladly,  and  they  say  ever  that  English- 
men should  flee  out  of  Ynde. 

Fro  Englond  men  gon  to  Ynde  by 
many  dyverse  Contreyes.  For  English- 
men ben  very  stirring  and  nymble.  For 
they  ben  in  the  seventh  climate,  that  is 
of  the  Moon.  And  the  Moon  (ye  have 
said  it  yourself.  Sir  John,  natheless,  is  it 
true)  is  of  lightly  moving,  for  to  go  di- 
verse ways,  and  see  strange  things,  and 
other  diversities  of  the  Worlde.  Where- 
fore Englishmen  be  lightly  moving,  and 
far  wandering.  And  they  gon  to  Ynde 
by  the  great  Sea  Ocean.  First  come 
they  to  Gibraltar,  that  was  the  point  of 
Spain,  and  builded  upon  a  rock ;  and 
there  ben  apes,  and  it  is  so  strong  that 
no  man  may  take  it.  Natheless  did 
Englishmen  take  it  fro  the  Spanyard, 
and  all  to  hold  the  way  to  Ynde.  For 
ye  may  sail  all  about  Africa,  and  past 
the  Cape  men  clepen  of  Good  Hope, 
but  that  way  unto  Ynde  is  long  and  the 
sea  is  weary.     Wherefore  men  rather  go 


S/R  JOHN  MANNDEVILLE         I  13 

by  the  Midland  sea,  and  Englishmen 
have  taken  many  Yles  in  that  sea. 

For  first  they  have  taken  an  YIe  that 
is  clept  Malta  ;  and  therein  built  they 
great  castles,  to  hold  it  against  them  of 
Fraunce,  and  Italy,  and  of  Spain.  And 
from  this  He  of  Malta  Men  gon  to  Cipre. 
And  Cipre  is  right  a  good  Yle,  and  a 
fair,  and  a  great,  and  it  hath  4  principal 
Cytees  within  him.  And  at  Famagost 
is  one  of  the  principal  Havens  of  the 
sea  that  is  in  the  world,  and  Englishmen 
have  but  a  lytel  while  gone  won  that 
Yle  from  the  Sarazynes.  Yet  say  that 
sort  of  Englishmen  where  of  I  told  you, 
that  is  puny  and  sore  adread,  that  the 
Lond  is  poisonous  and  barren  and  of  no 
avail,  for  that  Lond  is  much  more  hotter 
than  it  is  here.  Yet  the  Englishmen 
that  ben  werryoures  dwell  there  in  tents, 
and  the  skill  is  that  they  may  ben  the 
more  fresh. 

From  Cypre,  Men  gon  to  the  Lond 
of  Egypte,  and  in  a  Day  and  a  Night 
he  that  hath  a  good  wind  may  come 
8 


114    LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

to  the  Haven  of  Alessandrie.  Now  the 
Lond  of  Egypt  longeth  to  the  Soudan, 
yet  the  Soudan  longeth  not  to  the  Lond 
of  Egypt.  And  when  I  say  this,  I  do 
jape  with  words,  and  may  hap  ye  under- 
stond  me  not.  Now  Englishmen  went 
in  shippes  to  Alessandrie,  and  brent  it, 
and  over  ran  the  Lond,  and  their  soud- 
yours  warred  agen  the  Bedoynes,  and 
all  to  hold  the  way  to  Ynde.  For  it  is 
not  long  past  since  Frenchmen  let  dig  a 
dyke,  through  the  narrow  spit  of  lond, 
from  the  Midland  sea  to  the  Red  sea, 
wherein  was  Pharaoh  drowned.  So  this 
is  the  shortest  way  to  Ynde  there  may 
be,  to  sail  through  that  dyke,  if  men  gon 
by  sea. 

But  all  the  Lond  of  Egypt  is  clepen 
the  Vale  enchaunted  ;  for  no  man  may 
do  his  business  well  that  goes  thither, 
but  always  fares  he  evil,  and  therefore 
clepen  they  Egypt  the  Vale  perilous, 
and  the  sepulchre  of  reputations.  And 
men  say  there  that  is  one  of  the  entrees 
of  Helle.     In  that  Vale  is  plentiful  lack 


SIR  JOHN  MANNDEVILLE  II5 

of  Gold  and  Silver,  for  many  misbeliev- 
ing men,  and  many  Christian  men  also, 
have  gone  often  time  for  to  take  of  the 
Thresoure  that  there  was  of  old,  and 
have  pilled  the  Thresoure,  wherefore 
there  is  none  left.  And  Englishmen 
have  let  carry  thither  great  store  of  our 
Thresoure,  9,000,000  of  Pounds  sterling, 
and  whether  they  will  see  it  agen  I  mis- 
doubt me.  For  that  Vale  is  alle  fulle  of 
Develes  and  Fiendes  that  men  clepen 
Bondholderes,  for  that  Egypt  from  of  olde 
is  the  Lond  of  Bondage.  And  whatso- 
ever Thresoure  cometh  into  the  Lond, 
these  Devyls  of  Bondholders  grabben 
the  same.  Natheless  by  that  Vale  do 
Englishmen  go  unto  Ynde,  and  they  gon 
by  Aden,  even  to  Kurrachee,  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Flood  of  Ynde.  Thereby 
they  send  their  souldyours,  when  they 
are  adread  of  them  of  Muscovy. 

For,  look  you,  there  is  another  way 
into  Ynde,  and  thereby  the  men  of  Mus- 
covy are  fain  to  come,  if  the  Englishmen 
let  them  not.     That  way  cometh  by  De- 


Il6     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

sert  and  Wildernesse,  from  the  sea  that 
is  clept  Caspian,  even  to  Khiva,  and  so 
to  Merv  ;  and  then  come  ye  to  Zulfikar 
and  Penjdeh,  and  anon  to  Herat,  that 
is  called  the  Key  of  the  Gates  of  Ynde. 
Then  ye  win  the  lond  of  the  Emir  of  the 
Afghauns,  a  great  prince  and  a  rich,  and 
he  hath  in  his  Thresoure  more  crosses, 
and  stars,  and  coats  that  captains  wearen, 
than  any  other  man  on  earth. 

For  all  they  of  Muscovy,  and  all  Eng- 
lishmen maken  him  gifts,  and  he  keep- 
eth  the  gifts,  and  he  keepeth  his  own 
counsel.  For  his  lond  lieth  between 
Ynde  and  the  folk  of  Muscovy,  where- 
fore both  Englishmen  and  men  of  Mus- 
covy would  fain  have  him  friendly,  yea, 
and  independent.  Wherefore  they  of  both 
parties  give  him  clocks,  and  watches,  and 
stars,  and  crosses,  and  culverins,  and 
now  and  again  they  let  cut  the  throats 
of  his  men  some  deal,  and  pill  his  coun- 
try. Thereby  they  both  set  up  their 
rest  that  the  Emir  will  be  independent, 
yea,  and  friendly.    But  his  men  love  him 


SIR  JOHN  MANNDEVILLE        II7 

not,  neither  love  they  the  English,  nor 
the  Muscovy  folk,  for  they  are  worship- 
pers of  Mahound,  and  endure  not  Chris- 
tian men.  And  they  love  not  them  that 
cut  their  throats,  and  burn  their  coun- 
try. 

Now  they  of  Muscovy  ben  Devyls, 
and  they  ben  subtle  for  to  make  a  thing 
seme  otherwise  than  it  is,  for  to  deceive 
mankind.  Wherefore  Englishmen  put- 
ten  no  trust  in  them  of  Muscovy,  save 
only  the  Englishmen  clept  Radicals,  for 
they  make  as  if  they  loved  these  Dev- 
eles,  out  of  the  fear  and  dread  of  war 
wherein  they  go,  and  would  be  slaves 
sooner  than  fight.  But  the  folk  of  Ynde 
know  not  what  shall  befall,  nor  whether 
they  of  Muscovy  will  take  the  Lond,  or 
Englishmen  shall  keep  it,  so  that  their 
hearts  may  not  enduren  for  drede.  And 
methinks  that  soon  shall  Englishmen 
and  Muscovy  folk  put  their  bodies  in 
adventure,  and  war  one  with  another, 
and  all  for  the  way  to  Ynde. 

But   St.  George  for   Englond,  I  say, 


Il8     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

and  so  enough ;  and  may  the  Seyntes 
hele  thee,  Sir  John,  of  thy  Gowtes  Arte- 
tykes,  that  thee  tormenten.  But  to  thy 
Boke  I  list  not  to  give  no  credence. 


XII. 

To  Alexandre  Dumas. 

Sir,  —  There  are  moments  when  the 
wheels  of  life,  even  of  such  a  life  as 
yours,  run  slow,  and  when  mistrust  and 
doubt  overshadow  even  the  most  intrepid 
disposition.  In  such  a  moment,  towards 
the  ending  of  your  days,  you  said  to 
your  son,  M.  Alexandre  Dumas,  '  I  seem 
to  see  myself  set  on  a  pedestal  which 
trembles  as  if  it  were  founded  on  the 
sands.'  These  sands,  your  uncounted 
volumes,  are  all  of  gold,  and  make  a 
foundation  more  solid  than  the  rock. 
As  well  might  the  singer  of  Odysseus, 
or  the  authors  of  the  *  Arabian  Nights  ' 
or  the  first  inventors  of  the  stories  of 
Boccaccio,  believe  that  their  works  were 
perishable  (their  names,  indeed,  have 
perished),  as  the  creator  of  *  Les  Trois 


120     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

Mousquetaires  '  alarm  himself  with  the 
thought  that  the  world  could  ever  forget 
Alexandre  Dumas. 

Than  yours  there  has  been  no  greater 
nor  more  kindly  and  beneficent  force  in 
modern  letters.  To  Scott,  indeed,  you 
owed  the  first  impulse  of  your  genius  ; 
but,  once  set  in  motion,  what  miracles 
could  it  not  accomplish  .-•  Our  dear 
Porthos  was  overcome,  at  last,  by  a  su- 
perhuman burden  ;  but  your  imagina- 
tive strength  never  found  a  task  too 
great  for  it.  What  an  extraordinary 
vigour,  what  health,  what  an  overflow  of 
force  was  yours !  It  is  good,  in  a  day 
of  small  and  laborious  ingenuities,  to 
breathe  the  free  air  of  your  books,  and 
dwell  in  the  company  of  Dumas's  men 
—  so  gallant,  so  frank,  so  indomitable, 
such  swordsmen,  and  such  trenchermen. 
Like  M.  de  Rochefort  in  'Vingt  Ans 
Apres,'  like  that  prisoner  of  the  Bastille, 
your  genius  '  n'est  que  d'un  parti,  c'est 
du  parti  du  grand  air.' 

There  seems  to   radiate   from  you  a 


ALEXANDRE  DUMAS  121 

still  persistent  energy  and  enjoyment  ; 
in  that  current  of  strength  not  only  your 
characters  live,  frolic,  kindly,  and  sane, 
but  even  your  very  collaborators  were 
animated  by  the  virtue  which  went  out 
of  you.  How  else  can  we  explain  it, 
the  dreary  charge  which  feeble  and  en- 
vious tongues  have  brought  against  you, 
in  England  and  at  home  ?  They  say 
you  employed  in  your  novels  and  dramas 
that  vicarious  aid  which,  in  the  slang  of 
the  studio,  the  '  sculptor's  ghost '  is  fa- 
bled to  afford. 

Well,  let  it  be  so  ;  these  ghosts,  when 
uninspired  by  you,  were  faint  and  impo- 
tent as  '  the  strengthless  tribes  of  the 
dead '  in  Homer's  Hades,  before  Odys- 
seus had  poured  forth  the  blood  that 
gave  them  a  momentary  valour.  It  was 
from  you  and  your  inexhaustible  vitality 
that  these  collaborating  spectres  drew 
what  life  they  possessed ;  and  when 
they  parted  from  you  they  shuddered 
back  into  their  nothingness.  Where  are 
the   plays,   where   the   romances  which 


122     LETTERS    TO    DEAD  AUTHORS 

Maquet  and  the  rest  wrote  in  their  own 
strength  ?  They  are  forgotten  with  last 
year's  snows  ;  they  have  passed  into  the 
wide  waste -paper  basket  of  the  world. 
You  say  of  D'Artagnan,  when  severed 
from  his  three  friends  —  from  Porthos, 
Athos,  and  Aramis  —  '  he  felt  that  he 
could  do  nothing,  save  on  the  condition 
that  each  of  these  companions  yielded 
to  him,  if  one  may  so  speak,  a  share  of 
that  electric  fluid  which  was  his  gift 
from  heaven.' 

No  man  of  letters  ever  had  so  great 
a  measure  of  that  gift  as  you  ;  none 
gave  of  it  more  freely  to  all  who  came 
—  to  the  chance  associate  of  the  hour, 
as  to  the  characters,  all  so  burly  and 
full  -  blooded,  who  flocked  from  your 
brain.  Thus  it  was  that  you  failed  when 
you  approached  the  supernatural.  Your 
ghosts  had  too  much  flesh  and  blood, 
more  than  the  living  persons  of  feebler 
fancies.  A  writer  so  fertile,  so  rapid, 
so  masterly  in  the  ease  with  which  he 
worked,  could  not  escape  the  reproaches 


ALEXANDRE  DUMAS  1 23 

of  barren  envy.  Because  you  overflowed 
with  wit,  you  could  not  be  *  serious  ; ' 
because  you  created  with  a  word,  you 
were  said  to  scamp  your  work  ;  because 
you  were  never  dull,  never  pedantic,  in- 
capable of  greed,  you  were  to  be  cen- 
sured as  desultory,  inaccurate,  and  prod- 
igal. 

A  generation  suffering  from  mental 
and  physical  anaemia  —  a  generation  de- 
voted to  the  '  chiselled  phrase,'  to  accu- 
mulated 'documents,'  to  microscopic  por- 
ings  over  human  baseness,  to  minute 
and  disgustful  records  of  what  in  hu- 
manity is  least  human  —  may  readily 
bring  these  unregarded  and  railing  ac- 
cusations. Like  one  of  the  great  and 
good-humoured  Giants  of  Rabelais,  you 
may  hear  the  murmurs  from  afar,  and 
smile  with  disdain.  To  you,  who  can 
amuse  the  world  —  to  you  who  offer  it 
the  fresh  air  of  the  highway,  the  battle- 
field, and  the  sea  —  the  world  must  al- 
ways return  :  escaping  gladly  from  the 
boudoirs  and  the  bouges,  from  the  sur- 


124     LETTERS   TO  DEAD   AUTHORS 

geries  and  hospitals,  and  dead  rooms,  of 
M,  Daudet  and  M.  Zola  and  of  the  wea- 
risome De  Goncourt. 

With  all  your  frankness,  and  with 
that  queer  morality  of  the  Camp  which, 
if  it  swallows  a  camel  now  and  again, 
never  strains  at  a  gnat,  how  healthy  and 
wholesome,  and  even  pure,  are  your  ro- 
mances !  You  never  gloat  over  sin,  nor 
dabble  with  an  ugly  curiosity  in  the  cor- 
ruptions of  sense.  The  passions  in  your 
tales  are  honourable  and  brave,  the  mo- 
tives are  clearly  human.  Honour,  Love, 
Friendship  make  the  threefold  cord,  the 
clue  your  knights  and  dames  follow 
through  how  delightful  a  labyrinth  of 
adventures !  Your  greatest  books,  I 
take  the  liberty  to  maintain,  are  the 
Cycle  of  the  Valois  ('  La  Reine  Margot,' 
*  La  Dame  de  Montsoreau,'  '  Les  Qua- 
rante-cinq '),  and  the  Cycle  of  Louis 
Treize  and  Louis  Quatorze  ('  Les  Trois 
Mousquetaires,'  '  Vingt  Ans  Apres,'  '  Le 
Vicomte  de  Bragelonne ') ;  and,  beside 
these  two  trilogies  —  a  lonely  monument, 


ALEXANDRE  DUMAS  1 25 

like  the  sphinx  hard  by  the  three  pyra- 
mids — '  Monte  Cristo.' 

In  these  romances  how  easy  it  would 
have  been  for  you  to  burn  incense  to 
that  great  goddess,  Lubricity,  whom  our 
critic  says  your  people  worship.  You 
had  Brantome,  you  had  Tallemant,  you 
had  Retif,  and  a  dozen  others,  to  furnish 
materials  for  scenes  of  voluptuousness 
and  of  blood  that  would  have  outdone 
even  the  present  naUiralistes.  From 
these  alcoves  of  '  Les  Dames  Galantes,' 
and  from  the  torture  chambers  (M.  Zola 
would  not  have  spared  us  one  starting 
sinew  of  brave  La  Mole  on  the  rack) 
you  turned,  as  Scott  would  have  turned, 
without  a  thought  of  their  profitable  lit- 
erary uses.  You  had  other  metal  to  work 
on  :  you  gave  us  that  superstitious  and 
tragical  true  love  of  La  Mole's,  that  de- 
votion —  how  tender  and  how  pure  !  — 
of  Bussy  for  the  Dame  de  Montsoreau. 
You  gave  us  the  valour  of  D'Artagnan, 
the  strength  of  Porthos,  the  melancholy 
nobility   of  Athos :    Honour,    Chivalry, 


126    LETTERS   TO   DEAD  AUTHORS 

and  Friendship.  I  declare  your  charac- 
ters are  real  people  to  me  and  old  friends. 
I  cannot  bear  to  read  the  end  of  '  Brage- 
lonne/  and  to  part  with  them  for  ever. 
*  Suppose  Porthos,  Athos,  and  Aramis 
should  enter  with  a  noiseless  swagger, 
curling  their  moustaches. '  How  we  would 
welcome  them,  forgiving  D'Artagnan 
even  his  hateful  foiirberie  in  the  case  of 
Milady.  The  brilliance  of  your  dialogue 
has  never  been  approached  :  there  is  wit 
everywhere  ;  repartees  glitter  and  ring 
like  the  flash  and  clink  of  small-swords. 
Then  what  duels  are  yours !  and  what 
inimitable  battle-pieces  !  I  know  four 
good  fights  of  one  against  a  multitude, 
in  literature.  These  are  the  Death  of 
Gretir  the  Strong,  the  Death  of  Gunnar 
of  Lithend,  the  Death  of  Hereward  the 
Wake,  the  Death  of  Bussy  d'Amboise. 
We  can  compare  the  strokes  of  the  he- 
roic fighting-times  with  those  described 
in  later  days ;  and,  upon  my  word,  I  do 
not  know  that  the  short  sword  of  Gretir, 
or  the  bill  of  Skarphedin,  or  the  bow  of 


ALEXANDRE  DUMAS  12/ 

Gunnar  was  better  wielded  than  the  ra- 
pier of  your  Bussy  or  the  sword  and 
shield  of  Kingsley's  Hereward. 

They  say  your  fencing  is  unhistorical ; 
no  doubt  it  is  so,  and  you  knew  it.  La 
Mole  could  not  have  lunged  on  Cocon- 
nas  'after  deceiving  circle  ;'  for  the  parry 
was  not  invented  except  by  your  immor- 
tal Chicot,  a  genius  in  advance  of  his 
time.  Even  so  Hamlet  and  Laertes 
would  have  fought  with  shields  and  axes, 
not  with  small  swords.  But  what  mat- 
ters this  pedantry }  In  your  works  we 
hear  the  Homeric  Muse  again,  rejoicing 
in  the  clash  of  steel ;  and  even,  at  times, 
your  very  phrases  are  unconsciously  Ho- 
meric. 

Look  at  these  men  of  murder,  on  the 
Eve  of  St.  Bartholomew,  who  flee  in  ter- 
ror from  the  Queen's  chamber,  and  'find 
the  door  too  narrow  for  their  flight:'  the 
very  words  were  anticipated  in  a  line  of 
the  'Odyssey'  concerning  the  massacre 
of  the  Wooers.  And  the  picture  of 
Catherine  de  Medicis,  prowling  'like  a 


128     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

wolf  among  the  bodies  and  the  blood,'  in 
a  passage  of  the  Louvre  —  the  picture 
is  taken  unwittingly  from  the  '  Iliad.' 
There  was  in  you  that  reserve  of  primi- 
tive force,  that  epic  grandeur  and  sim- 
plicity of  diction.  This  is  the  force  that 
animates  '  Monte  Cristo,'  the  earlier 
chapters,  the  prison,  and  the  escape.  In 
later  volumes  of  that  romance,  methinks, 
you  stoop  your  wing.  Of  your  dramas  I 
have  little  room,  and  less  skill,  to  speak. 
'Antony,'  they  tell  me,  was  'the  great- 
est literary  event  of  its  time,'  was  a 
restoration  of  the  stage,  '  While  Vic- 
tor Hugo  needs  the  cast-off  clothes  of 
history,  the  wardrobe  and  costume,  the 
sepulchre  of  Charlemagne,  the  ghost  of 
Barbarossa,  the  coffins  of  Lucretia  Bor- 
gia, Alexandre  Dumas  requires  no  more 
than  a  room  in  an  inn,  where  people 
meet  in  riding  cloaks,  to  move  the  soul 
with  the  last  degree  of  terror  and  of 
pity.' 

The  reproach  of   being   amusing  has 
somewhat   dimmed  your  fame  —  for  a 


ALEXANDRE  PUMAS  I  29 

moment.  The  shadow  of  this  tyranny 
will  soon  be  overpast ;  and  when  '  La 
Curee '  and  '  Pot-Bouille '  are  more  for- 
gotten than  *  Le  Grand  Cyrus,'  men  and 
women  —  and,  above  all,  boys  —  will 
laugh  and  weep  over  the  page  of  Alex- 
andre Dumas.  Like  Scott  himself,  you 
take  us  captive  in  our  childhood.  I  re- 
member a  very  idle  little  boy  who  was 
busy  with  the  'Three  Musketeers'  when 
he  should  have  been  occupied  with  'Wil- 
kins's  Latin  Prose.'  '  Twenty  years 
after'  (alas  and  more)  he  is  still  constant 
to  that  gallant  company ;  and,  at  this 
very  moment,  is  breathlessly  wondering 
whether  Grimaud  will  steal  M.  de  Beau- 
fort out  of  the  Cardinal's  prison. 
9 


XIII. 

To  Theocritus. 

'Sweet,  methinks,  is  the  whispering 
sound  of  yonder  pine-tree,'  so,  Theocri- 
tus, with  that  sweet  word  dSt',  didst  thou 
begin  and  strike  the  keynote  of  thy 
songs.  '  Sweet,'  and  didst  thou  find 
aught  of  sweet,  when  thou,  like  thy 
Daphnis,  didst  '  go  down  the  stream, 
when  the  whirhng  wave  closed  over  the 
man  the  Muses  loved,  the  man  not  hated 
of  the  Nymphs  ?  '  Perchance  below 
those  waters  of  death  thou  didst  find, 
like  thine  own  Hylas,  the  lovely  Nereids 
waiting  thee,  Eunice,  and  Malis,  and 
Nycheia  with  her  April  eyes.  In  the 
House  of  Hades,  Theocritus,  doth  there 
dwell  aught  that  is  fair,  and  can  the  low 
light  on  the  fields  of  asphodel  make  thee 
forget  thy  Sicily  .^     Nay,  methinks  thou 


THEOCRITUS  1 3 I 

hast  not  forgotten,  and  perchance  for  po- 
ets dead  there  is  prepared  a  place  more 
beautiful  than  their  dreams.  It  was  well 
for  the  later  minstrels  of  another  day,  it 
was  well  for  Ronsard  and  Du  Bellay  to 
desire  a  dim  Elysium  of  their  own,  where 
the  sunlight  comes  faintly  through  tiie 
shadow  of  the  earth,  where  the  poplars 
are  duskier,  and  the  waters  more  pale 
than  in  the  meadows  of  Anjou. 

There,  in  that  restful  twilight,  far  re- 
mote from  war  and  plot,  from  sword  and 
fire,  and  from  religions  that  sharpened 
the  steel  and  lit  the  torch,  there  these 
learned  singers  would  fain  have  wan- 
dered with  their  learned  ladies,  satiated 
with  life  and  in  love  with  an  unearthly 
quiet.  But  to  thee,  Theocritus,  no  twi- 
light of  the  Hollow  Land  was  dear,  but 
the  high  suns  of  Sicily  and  the  brown 
cheeks  of  the  country  maidens  were 
happiness  enough.  For  thee,  therefore, 
methinks,  surely  is  reserved  an  Elysium 
beneath  the  summer  of  a  far-off  system, 
with  stars  not   ours  and   alien  seasons. 


132     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

There,  as  Bion  prayed,  shall  Spring,  the 
thrice  desirable,  be  with  thee  the  whole 
year  through,  where  there  is  neither 
frost,  nor  is  the  heat  so  heavy  on  men, 
but  all  is  fruitful,  and  all  sweet  things 
blossom,  and  evenly  meted  are  darkness 
and  dawn.  Space  is  wide,  and  there  be 
many  worlds,  and  suns  enow,  and  the 
Sun-god  surely  has  had  a  care  of  his 
own.  Little  didst  thou  need,  in  thy  na- 
tive land,  the  isle  of  the  three  capes,  lit- 
tle didst  thou  need  but  sunlight  on  land 
and  sea.  Death  can  have  shown  thee 
naught  dearer  than  the  fragrant  shadow 
of  the  pines,  where  the  dry  needles  of 
the  fir  are  strewn,  or  glades  where  feath- 
ered ferns  make  '  a  couch  more  soft 
than  Sleep.'  The  short  grass  of  the 
cliffs,  too,  thou  didst  love,  where  thou 
wouldst  lie,  and  watch,  with  the  tunny 
watcher  till  the  deep  blue  sea  was 
broken  by  the  burnished  sides  of  the 
tunny  shoal,  and  afoam  with  their  gam- 
bols in  the  brine.  There  the  Muses  met 
thee,  and  the  Nymphs,  and  there  Apollo, 


THEOCRITUS  I 33 

remembering  his  old  thraldom  with  Ad- 
metus,  would  lead  once  more  a  mortal's 
flocks,  and  listen  and  learn,  Theocritus, 
while  thou,  like  thine  own  Comatas, 
'  didst  sweetly  sing.' 

There,  methinks,  I  see  thee  as  in  thy 
happy  days,  'reclined  on  deep  beds  of 
fragrant  lentisk,  lowly  strewn,  and  re- 
joicing in  new  stript  leaves  of  the  vine, 
while  far  above  thy  head  waved  many  a 
poplar,  many  an  elm-tree,  and  close  at 
hand  the  sacred  waters  sang  from  the 
mouth  of  the  cavern  of  the  nymphs.' 
And  when  night  came,  methinks  thou 
wouldst  flee  from  the  merry  company 
and  the  dancing  girls,  from  the  fading 
crowns  of  roses  or  white  violets,  from 
the  cottabos,  and  the  minstrelsy,  and  the 
Bibline  wine,  from  these  thou  wouldst 
slip  away  into  the  summer  night.  Then 
the  beauty  of  life  and  of  the  summer 
would  keep  thee  from  thy  couch,  and 
wandering  away  from  Syracuse  by  the 
sandhills  and  the  sea,  thou  wouldst 
watch  the  low  cabin,  roofed  with  grass, 


134      LETTERS    TO   DEAD  AUTHORS 

where  the  fishing-rods  of  reed  were  lean- 
ing against  the  door,  while  the  Mediter- 
ranean floated  up  her  waves,  and  filled 
the  waste  with  sound.  There  didst  thou 
see  thine  ancient  fishermen  rising  ere 
the  dawn  from  their  bed  of  dry  sea- 
weed, and  heardst  them  stirring,  drowsy, 
among  their  fishing  gear,  and  heardst 
them  tell  their  dreams. 

Or  again  thou  wouldst  wander  with 
dusty  feet  through  the  ways  that  the 
dust  makes  silent,  while  the  breath  of 
the  kine,  as  they  were  driven  forth  with 
the  morning,  came  fresh  to  thee,  and 
the  trailing  dewy  branch  of  honeysuckle 
struck  sudden  on  thy  cheek.  Thou 
wouldst  see  the  Dawn  awake  in  rose 
and  saffron  across  the  waters,  and  Etna, 
grey  and  pale  against  the  sky,  and  the 
setting  crescent  would  dip  strangely  in 
the  glow,  on  her  way  to  the  sea.  Then, 
methinks,  thou  wouldst  murmur,  like 
thine  own  Simaetha,  the  love-lorn  witch, 
*  Farewell,  Selene,  bright  and  fair ;  fare- 
well, ye    other   stars,  that    follow  the 


THEOCRITUS  1 35 

wheels  of  the  quiet  Night.'  Nay,  surely 
it  was  in  such  an  hour  that  thou  didst 
behold  the  girl  as  she  burned  the  laurel 
leaves  and  the  barley  grain,  and  melted 
the  waxen  image,  and  called  on  Selene 
to  bring  her  lover  home.  Even  so,  even 
now,  in  the  islands  of  Greece,  the  set- 
ting Moon  may  listen  to  the  prayers  of 
maidens.  *  Bright  golden  Moon,  that 
now  art  near  the  waters,  go  thou  and 
salute  my  lover,  he  that  stole  my  love, 
and  that  kissed  me,  saying  "  Never  will 
I  leave  thee."  And  lo,  he  hath  left  me 
as  men  leave  a  field  reaped  and  gleaned, 
like  a  church  where  none  cometh  to 
pray,  like  a  city  desolate.' 

So  the  girls  still  sing  in  Greece,  for 
though  the  Temples  have  fallen,  and  the 
wandering  shepherds  sleep  beneath  the 
broken  columns  of  the  god's  house  in 
Selinus,  yet  these  ancient  fires  burn  still 
to  the  old  divinities  in  the  shrines  of  the 
hearths  of  the  peasants.  It  is  none  of 
the  new  creeds  that  cry,  in  the  dirge  of 
the  Sicilian  shepherds  of  our  time,  *  Ah, 


136     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

light  of  mine  eyes,  what  gift  shall  I  send 
thee,  what  offering  to  the  other  world  ? 
The  apple  fadeth,  the  quince  decayeth, 
and  one  by  one  they  perish,  the  petals 
of  the  rose.  I  will  send  thee  my  tears 
shed  on  a  napkin,  and  what  though  it 
burneth  in  the  flame,  if  my  tears  reach 
thee  at  the  last.' 

Yes,  little  is  altered,  Theocritus,  on 
these  shores  beneath  the  sun,  where 
thou  didst  wear  a  tawny  skin  stripped 
from  the  roughest  of  he-goats,  and  about 
thy  breast  an  old  cloak  buckled  with  a 
plaited  belt.  Thou  wert  happier  there, 
in  Sicily,  methinks,  and  among  vines 
and  shadowy  lime-trees  of  Cos,  than  in 
the  dust,  and  heat,  and  noise  of  Alex- 
andria. What  love  of  fame,  what  lust  of 
gold  tempted  thee  away  from  the  red 
cliffs,  and  grey  olives,  and  wells  of  black 
water  wreathed  with  maidenhair } 

The  music  of  thy  rustic  flute 
Kept  not  for  long  its  happy  country  tone ; 

Lost  it  too  soon,  and  learned  a  stormy  note 
Of  men  contention  tost,  of  men  who  groan, 


THEOCRITUS  1 37 

Which  tasked  thy  pipe  too  sore,  and  tired  thy 
throat  — 
It  failed,  and  thou  wast  mute  ! 

What  hadst  thou  to  make  in  cities, 
and  what  could  Ptolemies  and  Princes 
give  thee  better  than  the  goat -milk 
cheese  and  the  Ptelean  wine  ?  Thy 
Muses  were  meant  to  be  the  delight  of 
peaceful  men,  not  of  tyrants  and  wealthy 
merchants,  to  whom  they  vainly  went  on 
a  begging  errand.  *  Who  will  open  his 
door  and  gladly  receive  our  Muses  within 
his  house,  who  is  there  that  will  not 
send  them  back  again  without  a  gift? 
And  they  with  naked  feet  and  looks 
askance  come  homewards,  and  sorely 
they  upbraid  me  when  they  have  gone 
on  a  vain  journey,  and  listless  again  in 
the  bottom  of  their  empty  coffer  they 
dwell  with  heads  bowed  over  their  chilly 
knees,  where  is  their  drear  abode,  when 
portionless  they  return.'  How  far  hap- 
pier was  the  prisoned  goat-herd,  Coma- 
tas,  in  the  fragrant  cedar  chest  where 
the  blunt-faced  bees  from  the  meadow 


138    LETTERS    TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

fed  him  with  food  of  tender  flowers,  be- 
cause still  the  Muse  dropped  sweet 
nectar  on  his  lips  ! 

Thou  didst  leave  the  neat-herds  and 
the  kine,  and  the  oaks  of  Himera,  the 
galingale  hummed  over  by  the  bees,  and 
the  pine  that  dropped  her  cones,  and 
Amaryllis  in  her  cave,  and  Bombyca 
with  her  feet  of  carven  ivory.  Thou 
soughtest  the  City,  and  strife  with  other 
singers,  and  the  learned  write  still  on 
thy  quarrels  with  Apollonius  and  Calli- 
machus,  and  Antagoras  of  Rhodes.  So 
ancient  are  the  hatreds  of  poets,  envy, 
jealousy,  and  all  unkindness. 

Not  to  the  wits  of  Courts  couldst  thou 
teach  thy  rural  song,  though  all  these 
centuries,  more  than  two  thousand  years, 
they  have  laboured  to  vie  with  thee. 
There  has  come  no  new  pastoral  poet, 
though  Virgil  copied  thee,  and  Pope,  and 
Phillips,  and  all  the  buckram  band  of  the 
teacup  time ;  and  all  the  modish  swains 
of  France  have  sung  against  thee,  as 
the  son  cJiallcnged  Athene.     They  never 


THEOCRITUS  I 39 

knew  the  shepherd's  life,  the  long  winter 
nights  on  dried  heather  by  the  fire,  the 
long  summer  days,  when  over  the  dry 
grass  all  is  quiet,  and  only  the  insects 
hum,  and  the  shrunken  burn  whispers 
a  silver  tune.  Swains  in  high -heeled 
shoon,  and  lace,  shepherdesses  in  rouge 
and  diamonds,  the  world  is  weary  of  all 
concerning  them,  save  their  images  in 
porcelain,  eflfigies  how  unlike  the  golden 
figures,  dedicate  to  Aphrodite,  of  Bom- 
byca  and  Battus.  Somewhat,  Theocritus, 
thou  hast  to  answer  for,  thou  that  first 
of  men  brought  the  shepherd  to  Court, 
and  made  courtiers  wild  to  go  a  Maying 
with  the  shepherds. 


XIV. 

To  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 

Sir, — Your  English  readers,  better 
acquainted  with  your  poems  and  ro- 
mances than  with  your  criticisms,  have 
long  wondered  at  the  indefatigable  ha- 
tred which  pursues  your  memory.  You, 
who  knew  the  men,  will  not  marvel  that 
certain  microbes  of  letters,  the  survivors 
of  your  own  generation,  still  harass  your 
name  with  their  malevolence,  while  old 
women  twitter  out  their  incredible  and 
heeded  slanders  in  the  literary  papers 
of  New  York.  But  their  persistent  ani- 
mosity does  not  quite  suffice  to  explain 
the  dislike  with  which  many  American 
critics  regard  the  greatest  poet,  perhaps 
the  greatest  literary  genius,  of  their 
country.  With  a  commendable  patriot- 
ism,  they   are   not   apt   to  rate    native 


EDGAR  ALLAN  FOE  141 

merit  too  low  ;  and  you,  I  think,  are  the 
only  example  of  an  American  prophet 
almost  without  honour  in  his  own  coun- 
try. 

The  recent  publication  of  a  cold,  care- 
ful, and  in  many  respects  admirable 
study  of  your  career  (*  Edgar  Allan  Poe,' 
by  George  Wood  berry  :  Houghton,  Mif- 
flin and  Co.,  Boston)  reminds  English 
readers  who  have  forgotten  it,  and 
teaches  those  who  never  knew  it,  that 
you  were,  unfortunately,  a  Reviewer. 
How  unhappy  were  the  necessities,  how 
deplorable  the  vein,  that  compelled  or 
seduced  a  man  of  your  eminence  into 
the  dusty  and  stony  ways  of  contempo- 
rary criticism  !  About  the  writers  of  his 
own  generation  a  leader  of  that  genera- 
tion should  hold  his  peace.  He  should 
neither  praise  nor  blame  nor  defend  his 
equals  ;  he  should  not  strike  one  blow 
at  the  buzzing  ephemerae  of  letters.  The 
breath  of  their  life  is  in  the  columns  of 
'  Literary  Gossip  ; '  and  they  should  be 
allowed  to  perish  with  the  weekly  adver- 


142     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

tisements  on  which  they  pasture.  Re- 
viewing, of  course,  there  must  needs  be  ; 
but  great  minds  should  only  criticise  the 
great  who  have  passed  beyond  the  reach 
of  eulogy  or  fault-finding. 

Unhappily,  taste  and  circumstances 
combined  to  make  you  a  censor  ;  you 
vexed  a  continent,  and  you  are  still  un- 
forgiven.  What  '  irritation  of  a  sensi- 
tive nature,  chafed  by  some  indefinite 
sense  of  wrong,'  drove  you  (in  Mr.  Long- 
fellow's own  words)  to  attack  his  pure 
and  beneficent  Muse  we  may  never  as- 
certain. But  Mr.  Longfellow  forgave 
you  easily  ;  for  pardon  comes  easily  to 
the  great.  It  was  the  smaller  men,  the 
Daweses,  Griswolds,  and  the  like,  that 
knew  not  how  to  forget.  *  The  New 
Yorkers  never  forgave  him,'  says  your 
latest  biographer ;  and  one  scarcely  mar- 
vels at  the  inveteracy  of  their  malice. 
It  was  not  individual  vanity  alone,  but 
the  whole  literary  class  that  you  assailed. 
'As  a  literary  people,'  you  wrote,  'we 
are   one  vast   perambulating   humbug.' 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  1 43 

After  that  declaration  of  war  you  died, 
and  left  your  reputation  to  the  vanities 
yet  writhing  beneath  your  scorn.  They 
are  writhing  and  writing  still.  He  who 
knows  them  need  not  linger  over  the 
attacks  and  defences  of  your  personal 
character ;  he  will  not  waste  time  on 
calumnies,  tale -bearing,  private  letters, 
and  all  the  noisome  dust  which  takes  so 
long  in  settling  above  your  tomb. 

For  us  it  is  enough  to  know  that  you 
were  compelled  to  live  by  your  pen, 
and  that  in  an  age  when  the  author  of 
'  To  Helen '  and  '  The  Cask  of  Amontil- 
lado '  was  paid  at  the  rate  of  a  dollar  a 
column.  When  such  poverty  was  the 
mate  of  such  pride  as  yours,  a  misery 
more  deep  than  that  of  Burns,  an  agony 
longer  than  Chatterton's,  were  inevitable 
and  assured.  No  man  was  less  fortunate 
than  you  in  the  moment  of  his  birth  — 
infelix  opportunitate  vitcB.  Had  you  lived 
a  generation  later,  honour,  wealth,  ap- 
plause, success  in  Europe  and  at  home, 
would  all    have    been    yours.      Within 


144     LETTERS  TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

thirty  years  so  great  a  change  has  passed 
over  the  profession  of  letters  in  America  ; 
and  it  is  impossible  to  estimate  the  re- 
wards which  would  have  fallen  to  Edgar 
Poe,  had  chance  made  him  the  contem- 
porary of  Mark  Twain  and  of  '  Called 
Back.'  It  may  be  that  your  criticisms 
helped  to  bring  in  the  new  era,  and  to 
lift  letters  out  of  the  reach  of  quite  un- 
lettered scribblers.  Though  not  a  scholar, 
at  least  you  had  a  respect  for  scholar- 
ship. You  might  still  marvel  over  such 
words  as  'objectional'  in  the  new  biog- 
raphy of  yourself,  and  might  ask  what  is 
meant  by  such  a  sentence  as  '  his  con- 
nection with  it  had  inured  to  his  own 
benefit  by  the  frequent  puffs  of  himself/ 
and  so  forth. 

Best  known  in  your  own  day  as  a 
critic,  it  is  as  a  poet  and  a  writer  of 
short  tales  that  you  must  live.  But  to 
discuss  your  few  and  elaborate  poems 
is  a  waste  of  time,  so  completely  does 
your  own  brief  definition  of  poetry,  '  the 
rhythmic  creation  of  the  beautiful,'  ex- 


EDGAR  ALLAN  FOE  145 

haust  your  theory,  and  so  perfectly  is 
the  theory  illustrated  by  the  poems. 
Natural  bent,  and  reaction  against  the 
example  of  Mr.  Longfellow,  combined 
to  make  you  too  intolerant  of  what  you 
call  the  '  didactic '  element  in  verse. 
Even  if  morality  be  not  seven-eighths 
of  our  life  (the  exact  proportion  as  at 
present  estimated),  there  was  a  place 
even  on  the  Hellenic  Parnassus  for 
gnomic  bards,  and  theirs  in  the  nature 
of  the  case  must  always  be  the  largest 
public. 

'  Music  is  the  perfection  of  the  soul 
or  the  idea  of  poetry,'  so  you  wrote ; 
*  the  vagueness  of  exaltation  aroused  by 
a  sweet  air  (which  should  be  indefinite 
and  never  too  strongly  suggestive),  is 
precisely  what  we  should  aim  at  in  po- 
etry.' You  aimed  at  that  mark,  and 
struck  it  again  and  again,  notably  in 
'Helen,  thy  beauty  is  to  me,'  in  'The 
Haunted  Palace,'  *  The  Valley  of  Unrest,' 
and  '  The  City  in  the  Sea.'  But  by  some 
Nemesis  which    might,    perhaps,    have 


146     LETTERS  TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

been  foreseen,  you  are,  to  the  world,  the 
poet  of  one  poem  —  '  The  Raven  : '  a 
piece  in  which  the  music  is  highly  arti- 
ficial, and  the  '  exaltation '  (what  there  is 
of  it)  by  no  means  particularly  '  vague.' 
So  a  portion  of  the  public  know  little  of 
Shelley  but  the  '  Skylark,'  and  those  two 
incongruous  birds,  the  lark  and  the  raven, 
bear  each  of  them  a  poet's  name  vivu' 
per  ora  virum.  Your  theory  of  poetry, 
if  accepted,  would  make  you  (after  the 
author  of  *  Kubla  Khan  ')  the  foremost 
of  the  poets  of  the  world  ;  at  no  long  dis- 
tance would  come  Mr.  William  Morris  as 
he  was  when  he  wrote  '  Golden  Wings,' 
'The  Blue  Closet,'  and  'The  Sailing  of 
the  Sword  ; '  and,  close  up,  Mr.  Lear,  the 
author  of  '  The  Yongi  Bongi  Bo,'  and 
the  lay  of  the  '  Jumbhes.' 

On  the  other  hand  Homer  would  sink 
into  the  limbo  to  which  you  consigned 
Moliere.  If  we  may  judge  a  theory  by 
its  results,  when  compared  with  the  de- 
liberate verdict  of  the  world,  your  aes- 
thetic does  not  seem  to  hold  water.    The 


EDGAR  ALLAN  FOE  1 47 

*  Odyssey '  is  not  really  inferior  to  '  Ula- 
lume,'  as  it  ought  to  be  if  your  doctrine 
of  poetry  were  correct,  nor  '  Le  Festin 
de  Pierre '  to  '  Undine.'  Yet  you  de- 
serve the  praise  of  having  been  con- 
stant, in  your  poetic  practice,  to  your 
poetic  principles — principles  commonly 
deserted  by  poets  who,  like  Wordsworth, 
have  published  their  aesthetic  system. 
Your  pieces  are  few  ;  and  Dr.  Johnson 
would  have  called  you,  like  Fielding,  *  a 
barren  rascal.'  But  how  can  a  writer's 
verses  be  numerous  if  with  him,  as  with 
you,  '  poetry  is  not  a  pursuit  but  a  pas- 
sion .  .  .  which  cannot  at  will  be  ex- 
cited with  an  eye  to  the  paltry  compen- 
sations or  the  more  paltry  commenda- 
tions of  mankind ! '  Of  you  it  may  be 
said,  more  truly  than  Shelley  said  it  of 
himself,  that  'to  ask  you  for  anything 
human,  is  like  asking  at  a  gin-shop  for  a 
leg  of  mutton.' 

Humanity  must  always  be,  to  the  ma- 
jority of  men,  the  true  stuff  of  poetry  ; 
and  only  a  minority  will  thank  you  for 


148     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

that  rare  music  which  (like  the  strains 
of  the  fiddler  in  the  story)  is  touched  on 
a  single  string,  and  on  an  instrument 
fashioned  from  the  spoils  of  the  grave. 
You  chose,  or  you  were  destined 

To  vary  from  the  kindly  race  of  men  ; 

and  the  consequences,  which  wasted  your 
life,  pursue  your  reputation. 

For  your  stories  has  been  reserved  a 
boundless  popularity,  and  that  highest 
success  —  the  success  of  a  perfectly  sym- 
pathetic translation.  By  this  time,  of 
course,  you  have  made  the  acquaintance 
of  your  translator,  M.  Charles  Baudelaire, 
who  so  strenuously  shared  your  views 
about  Mr.  Emerson  and  the  Transcen- 
dentalists,  and  who  so  energetically  re- 
sisted all  those  ideas  of  '  progress'  which 
'came  from  Hell  or  Boston.'  On  this 
point,  however,  the  world  continues  to 
differ  from  you  and  M.  Baudelaire,  and 
perhaps  there  is  only  the  choice  between 
our  optimism  and  universal  suicide  or 
universal  opium-eating.     But  to  discuss 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  1 49 

your  ultimate  ideas  is  perhaps  a  profit- 
less digression  from  the  topic  of  your 
prose  romances. 

An  English  critic  (probably  a  North » 
erner  at  heart)  has  described  them  as 
'Hawthorne  and  delirium  tremens.'  I 
am  not  aware  that  extreme  orderliness, 
masterly  elaboration,  and  unchecked 
progress  towards  a  predetermined  effect 
are  characteristics  of  the  visions  of  de- 
lirium. If  they  be,  then  there  is  a  deal 
of  truth  in  the  criticism,  and  a  good 
deal  of  delirium  tremens  in  your  style. 
But  your  ingenuity,  your  completeness, 
your  occasional  luxuriance  of  fancy  and 
wealth  of  jewel-like  words,  are  not,  per- 
haps, gifts  which  Mr.  Hawthorne  had  at 
his  command.  He  was  a  great  writer  — 
the  greatest  writer  in  prose  fiction  whom 
America  has  produced.  But  you  and  he 
have  not  much  in  common,  except  a  cer- 
tain mortuary  turn  of  mind  and  a  taste 
for  gloomy  allegories  about  the  workings 
of  conscience. 

I  forbear  to  anticipate  your  verdict 


150     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

about  the  latest  essays  of  American  fic- 
tion. These  by  no  means  follow  in  the 
lines  which  you  laid  down  about  brevity 
and  the  steady  working  to  one  single  ef- 
fect. Probably  you  would  not  be  very 
tolerant  (tolerance  was  not  your  leading 
virtue)  of  Mr.  Roe,  now  your  country- 
men's favourite  novelist.  He  is  long, 
he  is  didactic,  he  is  eminently  unin- 
spired. In  the  works  of  one  who  is, 
what  you  were  called  yourself,  a  Bos- 
tonian,  you  would  admire,  at  least,  the 
acute  observation,  the  subtlety,  and  the 
unfailing  distinction.  But,  destitute  of 
humour  as  you  unhappily  but  undeni- 
ably were,  you  would  miss,  I  fear,  the 
charm  of  'Daisy  Miller.'  You  would  ad- 
mit the  unity  of  effect  secured  in  '  Wash- 
ington Square,'  though  that  effect  is  as 
remote  as  possible  from  the  terror  of 
'  The  House  of  Usher  '  or  the  vindic- 
tive triumph  of  '  The  Cask  of  Amontil- 
lado.' 

Farewell,  farewell,  thou    sombre  and 
solitary  spirit :  a  genius  tethered  to  the 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  151 

hack-work  of  the  press,  a  gentleman 
among  cajiaille,  a  poet  among  poetasters, 
dowered  with  a  scholar's  taste  without  a 
scholar's  training,  embittered  by  his  sen- 
sitive scorn,  and  all  unsupported  by  his 
consolations. 


XV. 

To  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Bart. 

Rodono,  St.  Mary's  Loch : 
Sept.  8,  1885. 

Sir,  —  In  your  biography  it  is  re- 
corded that  you  not  only  won  the  favour 
of  all  men  and  women  ;  but  that  a  do- 
mestic fowl  conceived  an  affection  for 
you,  and  that  a  pig,  by  his  will,  had 
never  been  severed  from  your  company. 
If  some  Circe  had  repeated  in  my  case 
her  favourite  miracle  of  turning  mortals 
into  swine,  and  had  given  me  a  choice, 
into  that  fortunate  pig,  blessed  among 
his  race,  would  I  have  been  converted ! 
You,  almost  alone  among  men  of  letters, 
still,  like  a  living  friend,  win  and  charm 
us  out  of  the  past ;  and  if  one  might  call 
up  a  poet,  as  the  scholiast  tried  to  call 
Homer,  from  the  shades,  who  would  not, 


S/J?  WALTER  SCOTT  1 53 

out  of  all  the  rest,  demand  some  hours 
of  your  society  ?  Who  that  ever  med- 
dled with  letters,  what  child  of  the  irrita- 
ble race,  possessed  even  a  tithe  of  your 
simple  manliness,  of  the  heart  that  never 
knew  a  touch  of  jealousy,  that  envied  no 
man  his  laurels,  that  took  honour  and 
wealth  as  they  came,  but  never  would 
have  deplored  them  had  you  missed  both 
and  remained  but  the  Border  sportsman 
and  the  Border  antiquary  ? 

Were  the  word  '  genial  '  not  so  much 
profaned,  were  it  not  misused  in  easy 
good-nature,  to  extenuate  lettered  and 
sensual  indolence,  that  worn  old  term 
might  be  applied,  above  all  men,  to  '  the 
Shirra.'  But  perhaps  we  scarcely  need 
a  word  (it  would  be  seldom  in  use)  for 
a  character  so  rare,  or  rather  so  lonely, 
in  its  nobility  and  charm  as  that  of  Wal- 
ter Scott.  Here,  in  the  heart  of  your 
own  country,  among  your  own  grey 
round-shouldered  hills  (each  so  like  the 
other  that  the  shadow  of  one  falling  on 
its  neighbour  exactly  outlines  that  neigh- 


154     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

hour's  shape),  it  is  of  you  and  of  your 
works  that  a  native  of  the  Forest  is 
most  frequently  brought  in  mind.  All 
the  spirits  of  the  river  and  the  hill,  all 
the  dying  refrains  of  ballad  and  the 
fading  echoes  of  story,  all  the  memory 
of  the  wild  past,  each  legend  of  burn 
and  loch,  seem  to  have  combined  to  in- 
form your  spirit,  and  to  secure  them- 
selves an  immortal  life  in  your  song.  It 
is  through  you  that  we  remember  them  ; 
and  in  recalling  them,  as  in  treading 
each  hillside  in  this  land,  we  again  re- 
member you  and  bless  you. 

It  is  not  '  Sixty  Years  Since '  the  echo 
of  Tweed  among  his  pebbles  fell  for  the 
last  time  on  your  ear  ;  not  sixty  years 
since,  and  how  much  is  altered  !  But 
two  generations  have  passed  ;  the  lad 
who  used  to  ride  from  Edinburgh  to 
Abbotsford,  carrying  new  books  for  you, 
and  old,  is  still  vending,  in  George  Street, 
old  books  and  new.  Of  politics  I  have 
not  the  heart  to  speak.  Little  joy  would 
you  have  had  in  most  that  has  befallen 


SIR  WALTER  SCOTT  1 55 

since  the  Reform  Bill  was  passed,  to  the 
chivalrous  cry  of  'burke  Sir  Walter.' 
We  are  still  very  Radical  in  the  Forest, 
and  you  were  taken  away  from  many 
evils  to  come.  How  would  the  cheek  of 
Walter  Scott,  or  of  Leyden,  have  blushed 
at  the  names  of  Majuba,  The  Soudan, 
Maiwand,  and  many  others  that  recall 
political  cowardice  or  military  incapac- 
ity !  On  the  other  hand,  who  but  you 
could  have  sung  the  dirge  of  Gordon,  or 
wedded  with  immortal  verse  the  names 
of  Hamilton  (who  fell  with  Cavagnari), 
of  the  two  Stewarts,  of  many  another 
clansman,  brave  among  the  bravest  ! 
Only  he  who  told  how 

The  stubborn  spearmen  still  made  good 
Their  dark  impenetrable  wood 

could  have  fitly  rhymed  a  score  of  feats 
of  arms  in  which,  as  at  M'Neill's  Zareeba 
and  at  Abu  Klea, 

Groom  fought  like  noble,  squire  like  knight, 
As  fearlessly  and  well. 

Ah,  Sir,  the  hearts  of  the  rulers  may 
wax  faint,  and  the  voting  classes   may 


156     LETTERS  TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

forget  that  they  are  Britons  ;  but  when 
it  comes  to  blows  our  fighting  men  might 
cry,  with  Leyden, 

My  name  is  little  Jock  Elliot, 
And  wha  daur  meddle  wi'  me  I 

Much  is  changed,  in  the  country-side  as 
well  as  in  the  country  ;  but  much  re- 
mains. The  little  towns  of  your  time 
are  populous  and  excessively  black  with 
the  smoke  of  factories  —  not,  I  fear,  at 
present  very  flourishing.  In  Galashiels 
you  still  see  the  little  change-house  and 
the  cluster  of  cottages  round  the  Laird's 
lodge,  like  the  clachan  of  Tully  Veolan. 
But  these  plain  remnants  of  the  old 
Scotch  towns  are  almost  buried  in  a 
multitude  of  *  smoky  dwarf  houses '  —  a 
living  poet,  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  has 
found  the  fitting  phrase  for  these  dwell- 
ings, once  for  all.  All  over  the  Forest 
the  waters  are  dirty  and  poisoned  :  I 
think  they  are  filthiest  below  Hawick  ; 
but  this  may  be  mere  local  prejudice  in 
a   Selkirk   man.     To   keep  them  clean 


S/J?  WALTER  SCOTT  1 57 

costs  money  ;  and,  though  improve- 
ments are  often  promised,  I  cannot  see 
much  change  for  the  better.  Abbots- 
ford,  luckily,  is  above  Galashiels,  and 
only  receives  the  dirt  and  dyes  of  Sel- 
kirk, Peebles,  Walkerburn,  and  Inner- 
lethen.  On  the  other  hand,  your  ill- 
omened  later  dwelling,  *  the  unhappy 
palace  of  your  race,'  is  overlooked  by 
villas  that  prick  a  cockney  ear  among 
their  larches,  hotels  of  the  future.  Ah, 
Sir,  Scotland  is  a  strange  place.  Whisky 
is  exiled  from  some  of  our  caravanserais, 
and  they  have  banished  Sir  John  Barley- 
corn. It  seems  as  if  the  views  of  the 
excellent  critic  (who  wrote  your  life 
lately,  and  said  you  had  left  no  descend- 
ants, le  paiivre  Jiomme  .')  were  beginning 
to  prevail.  This  pious  biographer  was 
greatly  shocked  by  that  capital  story 
about  the  keg  of  whisky  that  arrived  at 
the  Liddesdale  farmer's  during  family 
prayers.  Your  Toryism  also  was  an  of- 
fence to  him. 

Among   these   vicissitudes   of   things 


158     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

and  the  overthrow  of  customs,  let  us  be 
thankful  that,  beyond  the  reach  of  the 
manufacturers,  the  Border  country  re- 
mains as  kind  and  homely  as  ever.  I 
looked  at  Ashiestiel  some  days  ago  :  the 
house  seemed  just  as  it  may  have  been 
when  you  left  it  for  Abbotsford,  only 
there  was  a  lawn-tennis  net  on  the  lawn, 
the  hill  on  the  opposite  bank  of  the 
Tweed  was  covered  to  the  crest  with 
turnips,  and  the  burn  did  not  sing  below 
the  little  bridge,  for  in  this  arid  summer 
the  burn  was  dry.  But  there  was  still 
a  grilse  that  rose  to  a  big  March  brown 
in  the  shrunken  stream  below  Elibank. 
This  may  not  interest  you,  who  styled 
yourself 

No  fisher. 

But  a  well-wisher 

To  the  game  1 

Still,  as  when  you  were  thinking  over 
Marmion,  a  man  might  have  '  grand 
gallops  among  the  hills '  —  those  grave 
wastes  of  heather  and  bent  that  sever 
all  the  watercourses  and  roll  their  sheep- 


SIR  WALTER  SCOTT  1 59 

covered  pastures  from  Dollar  Law  to 
White  Combe,  and  from  White  Combe 
to  the  Three  Brethren  Cairn  and  the 
Windburg  and  Skelf  -  hill  Pen.  Yes, 
Teviotdale  is  pleasant  still,  and  there  is 
not  a  drop  of  dye  in  the  \s2Xqx,  purior 
electro,  of  Yarrow.  St.  Mary's  Loch  lies 
beneath  me,  smitten  with  wind  and  rain 
—  the  St.  Mary's  of  North  and  of  the 
Shepherd.  Only  the  trout,  that  see  a 
myriad  of  artificial  flies,  are  shyer  than 
of  yore.  The  Shepherd  could  no  longer 
fill  a  cart  up  Meggat  with  trout  so  much 
of  a  size  that  the  country  people  took 
them  for  herrings. 

The  grave  of  Piers  Cockburn  is  still 
not  desecrated  :  hard  by  it  lies,  within  a 
little  wood ;  and  beneath  that  slab  of  old 
sandstone,  and  the  graven  letters,  and 
the  sword  and  shield,  sleep  '  Piers  Cock- 
burn  and  Marjory  his  wife.'  Not  a  hun- 
dred yards  off  was  the  castle-door  where 
they  hanged  him  ;  this  is  the  tomb  of 
the  ballad,  and  the  lady  that  buried  him 
rests  now  with  her  wild  lord. 


l6o      LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

Oh,  wat  ye  no  my  heart  was  sair, 

When  I  happit  the  mouls  on  his  yellow  hair; 

Oh,  wat  ye  no  my  heart  was  wae, 

When  I  turned  about  and  went  my  way  I  ^ 

Here  too  hearts  have  broken,  and  there 
is  a  sacredness  in  the  shadow  and  be- 
neath these  clustering  berries  of  the 
rowan-trees.  That  sacredness,  that  rev- 
erent memory  of  our  old  land,  it  is 
always  and  inextricably  blended  with 
our  memories,  with  our  thoughts,  with 
our  love  of  you.     Scotchmen,  methinks, 

1  Lord  Napier  and  Ettrick  points  out  to  me  that, 
unluckily,  the  tradition  is  erroneous.  Piers  was  not 
executed  at  all.  William  Cockburn  suffered  in  Edin- 
burgh.    But  the  Border  Minstrelsy  overrides  history. 

Criminal  Trials  in  Scotland,  by  Robert  Pitcaim, 
Esq.     Vol.  i.  part  i.  p.  144,  A.  D.  1530.     17  Jac.  V. 

May  16.  William  Cokburne  of  Henderland,  con- 
victed (in  presence  of  the  King)  of  high  treason  com- 
mitted by  him  in  bringing  Alexander  Forestare  and 
his  son.  Englishmen^  to  the  plundering  of  Archibald 
Somervile  ;  and  for  treasonably  bringing  certain 
Englishmen  to  the  lands  of  Glenquhome ;  and  for 
common  theft,  common  reset  of  theft,  out-putting  and 
in-putting  thereof.  Sentence.  For  which  causes  and 
crimes  he  has  forfeited  his  life,  lands,  and  goods, 
movable  and  immovable  ;  which  shall  be  escheated 
to  the  King.     Beheaded. 


SIR  WALTER  SCOTT  l6l 

who  owe  so  much  to  you,  owe  you  most 
for  the  example  you  gave  of  the  beauty 
of  a  hfe  of  honour,  showing  them  what, 
by  Heaven's  blessing,  a  Scotchman  still 
might  be. 

Words,  empty  and  unavailing  —  for 
what  words  of  ours  can  speak  our 
thoughts  or  interpret  our  affections  ! 
From  you  first,  as  we  followed  the  deer 
with  King  James,  or  rode  with  William 
of  Deloraine  on  his  midnight  errand,  did 
we  learn  what  Poetry  means  and  all  the 
happiness  that  is  in  the  gift  of  song. 
This  and  more  than  may  be  told  you 
gave  us,  that  are  not  forgetful,  not  un- 
grateful, though  our  praise  be  unequal 
to  our  gratitude.  Fungor  inani  munerel 
II 


XVI. 

To  Eusebius  of  Ccesarea. 

(CONCERNING  THE   GODS   OK  THE   HEATHEN.) 

Touching  the  Gods  of  the  Heathen, 
most  reverend  Father,  thou  art  not  ig- 
norant that  even  now,  as  in  the  time  of 
thy  probation  on  earth,  there  is  great 
dissension.  That  these  feigned  Deities 
and  idols,  the  work  of  men's  hands,  are 
no  longer  worshipped  thou  knowest  ; 
neither  do  men  eat  meat  offered  to  idols. 
Even  as  spoke  that  last  Oracle  which 
murmured  forth,  the  latest  and  the  only 
true  voice  from  Delphi,  even  so  'the  fair- 
wrought  court  divine  hath  fallen ;  no 
more  hath  Phoebus  his  home,  no  more 
his  laurel-bough,  nor  the  singing  well  of 
water;  nay,  the  sweet -voiced  water  is 
silent.*  The  fane  is  ruinous,  and  the 
images  of  men's  idolatry  are  dust 


EUSEBIUS  OP  C^SAREA  163 

Nevertheless,  most  worshipful,  men 
do  still  dispute  about  the  beginnings  of 
those  sinful  Gods :  such  as  Zeus,  Athene, 
and  Dionysus  :  and  marvel  how  first  they 
won  their  dominion  over  the  souls  of  the 
foolish  peoples.  Now,  concerning  these 
things  there  is  not  one  belief,  but  many; 
howbeit,  there  are  two  main  kinds  of 
opinion.  One  sect  of  philosophers  be- 
lieves —  as  thyself,  with  heavenly  learn- 
ing, didst  not  vainly  persuade — that  the 
Gods  were  the  inventions  of  wild  and 
bestial  folk,  who,  long  before  cities  were 
builded  or  life  was  honourably  ordained, 
fashioned  forth  evil  spirits  in  their  own 
savage  likeness  ;  ay,  or  in  the  likeness 
of  the  very  beasts  that  perish.  To  this 
judgment,  as  it  is  set  forth  in  thy  Book 
of  the  Preparation  for  the  Gospel,  I, 
humble  as  I  am,  do  give  my  consent. 
But  on  the  other  side  are  many  and 
learned  men,  chiefly  of  the  tribes  of  the 
Alemanni,  who  have  almost  conquered 
the  whole  inhabited  world.  These,  be- 
ing unwilling  to  suppose  that  the  Hel- 


1 64     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

lenes  were  in  bondage  to  superstitions 
handed  down  from  times  of  utter  dark- 
ness and  a  bestial  life,  do  chiefly  hold 
with  the  heathen  philosophers,  even 
with  the  writers  whom  thou,  most  ven- 
erable, didst  confound  with  thy  wisdom 
and  chasten  with  the  scourge  of  small 
cords  of  thy  wit. 

Thus,  like  the  heathen,  our  doctors 
and  teachers  maintain  that  the  Gods  of 
the  nations  were,  in  the  beginning,  such 
pure  natural  creatures  as  the  blue  sky, 
the  sun,  the  air,  the  bright  dawn,  and 
the  fire  ;  but,  as  time  went  on,  men,  for- 
getting the  meaning  of  their  own  speech 
and  no  longer  understanding  the  tongue 
of  their  own  fathers,  were  misled  and 
beguiled  into  fashioning  all  those  lam- 
entable tales  :  as  that  Zeus,  for  love  of 
mortal  women,  took  the  shape  of  a  bull, 
a  ram,  a  serpent,  an  ant,  an  eagle,  and 
sinned  in  such  wise  as  it  is  a  shame 
even  to  speak  of. 

Behold,  then,  most  worshipful,  how 
these  doctors  and   learned   men  argue, 


EUSEBIUS  OF  CMS  ARE  A  1 65 

even  like  the  philosophers  of  the  hea- 
then whom  thou  didst  confound.  For 
they  declare  the  Gods  to  have  been  nat- 
ural elements,  sun  and  sky  and  storm, 
even  as  did  thy  opponents  ;  and,  like 
them,  as  thou  saidst,  *  they  are  nowise 
at  one  with  each  other  in  their  explana- 
tions.' For  of  old  some  boasted  that 
Hera  was  the  Air ;  and  some  that  she 
signified  the  love  of  woman  and  man  ; 
and  some  that  she  was  the  waters  above 
the  Earth  ;  and  others  that  she  was  the 
Earth  beneath  the  waters  ;  and  yet  oth- 
ers that  she  was  the  Night,  for  that 
Night  is  the  shadow  of  Earth :  as  if, 
forsooth,  the  men  who  first  worshipped 
Hera  had  understanding  of  these  things ! 
And  when  Hera  and  Zeus  quarrel  un- 
seemly (as  Homer  declareth),  this  meant 
(said  the  learned  in  thy  days)  no  more 
than  the  strife  and  confusion  of  the  ele- 
ments, and  was  not  in  the  beginning  an 
idle  slanderous  tale. 

To   all  which,  most  worshipful,  thou 
didst  answer  wisely :  saying  that  Hera 


l66    LETTERS   TO   DEAD  AUTHORS 

could  not  be  both  night,  and  earth,  and 
water,  and  air,  and  the  love  of  sexes,  and 
the  confusion  of  the  elements  ;  but  that 
all  these  opinions  were  vain  dreams,  and 
the  guesses  of  the  learned  And  why 
—  thou  saidst  —  even  if  the  Gods  were 
pure  natural  creatures,  are  such  foul 
things  told  of  them  in  the  Mysteries  as 
it  is  not  fitting  for  me  to  declare.  '  These 
wanderings,  and  drinkings,  and  loves, 
and  corruptions,  that  would  be  shameful 
in  men,  why,'  thou  saidst,  '  were  they 
attributed  to  the  natural  elements  ;  and 
wherefore  did  the  Gods  constantly  show 
themselves,  like  the  sorcerers  called 
were-wolves,  in  the  shape  of  the  perish- 
able beasts?'  But,  mainly,  thou  didst 
argue  that,  till  the  philosophers  of  the 
heathen  were  agreed  among  themselves, 
not  all  contradicting  each  the  other,  they 
had  no  semblance  of  a  sure  foundation 
for  their  doctrine. 

To  all  this  and  more,  most  worshipful 
Father,  I  know  not  what  the  heathen 
answered   thee.     But,  in   our  time,  the 


EUSEBIUS   OF  C^SAREA  1 6/ 

learned  men  who  stand  to  it  that  the 
heathen  Gods  were  in  the  beginning  the 
pure  elements,  and  that  the  nations,  for- 
getting their  first  love  and  the  signifi- 
cance of  their  own  speech,  became  con- 
fused and  were  betrayed  into  foul  sto- 
ries about  the  pure  Gods  —  these  learned 
men,  I  say,  agree  no  whit  among  them- 
selves. Nay,  they  differ  one  from  an- 
other, not  less  than  did  Plutarch  and 
Porphyry  and  Theagenes,  and  the  rest 
whom  thou  didst  laugh  to  scorn.  Bear 
with  me,  Father,  while  I  tell  thee  how 
the  new  Plutarchs  and  Porphyrys  do 
contend  among  themselves  ;  and  yet 
these  differences  of  theirs  they  call  '  Sci- 
ence ' ! 

Consider  the  goddess  Athene,  who 
sprang  armed  from  the  head  of  Zeus, 
even  as  —  among  the  fables  of  the  poor 
heathen  folk  of  seas  thou  never  knew- 
est  —  goddesses  are  fabled  to  leap  out 
from  the  armpits  or  feet  of  their  fathers. 
Thou  must  know  that  what  Plato,  in  the 
Cratylus,'  made  Socrates  say  in   jest, 


1 68     LETTERS    TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

the  learned  among  us  practise  in  sad 
earnest.  For,  when  they  wish  to  explain 
the  nature  of  any  God,  they  first  examine 
his  name,  and  torment  the  letters  thereof, 
arranging  and  altering  them  according 
to  their  will,  and  flying  off  to  the  speech 
of  the  Indians  and  Medes  and  Chaldeans, 
and  other  Barbarians,  if  Greek  will  not 
serve  their  turn.  How  saith  Socrates  ? 
*  I  bethink  me  of  a  very  new  and  inge- 
nious idea  that  occurs  to  me  ;  and,  if  I 
do  not  mind,  I  shall  be  wiser  than  I 
should  be  by  to-morrow's  dawn.  My  no- 
tion is  that  we  may  put  in  and  pull  out 
letters  at  pleasure  and  alter  the  accents.' 
Even  so  do  our  learned  —  not  at  pleas- 
ure, maybe,  but  according  to  certain 
fixed  laws  (so  they  declare)  ;  yet  none 
the  more  do  they  agree  among  them- 
selves. And  I  deny  not  that  they  dis- 
cover many  things  true  and  good  to  be 
known  ;  but,  as  touching  the  names  of 
the  Gods,  their  learning,  as  it  standeth, 
is  confusion.  Look,  then,  at  the  god- 
dess Athene  :   taking  one  example  out 


EUSEBJUS  OF  CMSAKEA  1 69 

of  hundreds.  We  have  dwelling  in  our 
coasts  Muellerus,  the  most  erudite  of  the 
doctors  of  the  Alemanni,  and  the  most 
golden  -  mouthed.  Concerning  Athene, 
he  saith  that  her  name  is  none  other 
than,  in  the  ancient  tongue  of  the  Brach- 
manae,  Ahand,  which,  being  interpreted, 
means  the  Dawn.  '  And  that  the  morn- 
ing light,'  saith  he,  *  offers  the  best  start- 
ing-point ;  for  the  later  growth  of  Athene 
has  been  proved,  I  believe,  beyond  the 
reach  of  doubt  or  even  cavil.'  ^ 

Yet  this  same  doctor  candidly  lets  us 
know  that  another  of  his  nation,  the 
witty  Benfeius,  hath  devised  another 
sense  and  origin  of  Athene,  taken  from 
the  speech  of  the  old  Medes.  But  Mu- 
ellerus declares  to  us  that  whosoever 
shall  examine  the  contention  of  Benfeius 
'  will  be  bound,  in  common  honesty,  to 
confess  that  it  is  untenable.'  This,  Fa- 
ther, is  'one  for  Benfeius,'  as  the  saying 
goes.    And  as  Muellerus  holds  that  these 

1  '  The  Lesson  of  Jupiter.'  —  Nineteenth  Century, 
October,  1885. 


I70     LETTERS   TO   DEAD  AUTHORS 

matters  '  admit  of  almost  mathematical 
precision,'  it  would  seem  that  Benfeius  is 
but  a  Dumvikopf,  as  the  Alemanni  say, 
in  their  own  language,  when  they  would 
be  pleasant  among  themselves. 

Now,  wouldst  thou  credit  it  ?  despite 
the  mathematical  plainness  of  the  facts, 
other  Alemanni  agree  neither  with  Muel- 
lerus,  nor  yet  with  Benfeius,  and  will 
neither  hear  that  Athene  was  the  Dawn, 
nor  yet  that  she  is  '  the  feminine  of  the 
Zend  Thrdetdna  atJiwydna.'  Lo,  you  ! 
how  Prellerus  goes  about  to  show  that 
her  name  is  drawn  not  from  Ahand  and 
the  old  Brachmanae,  nor  athwydna  and 
the  old  Medes,  but  from  'the  root  aXB^ 
whence  alQrip,  the  air,  or  a.B,  whence  av^os, 
a  flower.'  Yea,  and  Prellerus  will  have 
it  that  no  man  knows  the  verity  of  this 
matter.  None  the  less  he  is  very  bold, 
and  will  none  of  the  Dawn  ;  but  holds 
to  it  that  Athene  was,  from  the  first, 
'  the  clear  pure  height  of  the  Air,  which 
is  exceeding  pure  in  Attica.' 

Now,  Father,  as  if  all  this  were  not 


EUSEBIUS  OF  C^SAREA  I /I 

enough,  comes  one  Roscherus  in,  with  a 
mighty  great  volume  on  the  Gods,  and 
Furtwaenglerus,  among  others,  for  his 
ally.  And  these  doctors  will  neither 
with  Rueckertus  and  Hermannus,  take 
Athene  for  '  wisdom  in  person  ; '  nor 
with  Welckerus  and  Prellerus,  for  '  the 
goddess  of  air; '  nor  even,  with  Muelle- 
rus  and  mathematical  certainty,  for  'the 
Morning-Red  : '  but  they  say  that  Athene 
is  the  'black  thunder -cloud,  and  the 
.lightning  that  leapeth  therefrom'!  I 
make  no  doubt  that  other  Alemanni 
are  of  other  minds  :  qiiot  Alemanni  tot 
sefitenticB. 

Yea,  as    thou    saidst   of    the   learned 

heathen,    OuSe  yap   dAAi^XoiS   cri'/A^wva  rfiVtTio- 

XoyovaLv.  Yet  these  disputes  of  theirs 
they  call  '  Science  '  !  But  if  any  man 
says  to  the  learned  :  '  Best  of  men,  you 
are  erudite,  and  laborious  and  witty ; 
but,  till  you  are  more  of  the  same  mind, 
your  opinions  cannot  be  styled  knowl- 
edge. Nay,  they  are  at  present  of  no 
avail  whereon  to  found  any  doctrine  con- 


1/2     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

cerning  the  Gods' — that  man  is  railed 
at  for  his  '  mean '  and  '  weak '  arguments. 
Was  it  thus,  Father,  that  the  heathen 
railed  against  thee  ?  But  I  must  still 
believe,  with  thee,  that  these  evil  tales 
of  the  Gods  were  invented  'when  man's 
life  was  yet  brutish  and  wandering '  (as 
is  the  life  of  many  tribes  that  even  now 
tell  like  tales),  and  were  maintained  in 
honour  of  the  later  Greeks  '  because 
none  dared  alter  the  ancient  beliefs  of 
his  ancestors.'  Farewell,  Father;  and 
all  good  be  with  thee,  wishes  thy  well- 
wisher  and  thy  disciple. 


XVII. 

To  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley, 

Sir,  —  In  your  lifetime  on  earth  you 
were  not  more  than  commonly  curious 
as  to  what  was  said  by  'the  herd  of 
mankind,'  if  I  may  quote  your  own 
phrase.  It  was  that  of  one  who  loved 
his  fellow-men,  but  did  not  in  his  less 
enthusiastic  moments  overestimate  their 
virtues  and  their  discretion.  Removed 
so  far  away  from  our  hubbub,  and  that 
world  where,  as  you  say,  we  *  pursue  our 
serious  folly  as  of  old,'  you  are,  one  may 
guess,  but  moderately  concerned  about 
the  fate  of  your  writings  and  your  repu- 
tation. As  to  the  first,  you  have  some- 
where said,  in  one  of  your  letters,  that 
the  final  judgment  on  your  merits  as  a 
poet  is  in  the  hands  of  posterity,  and 
that  you  fear  the  verdict  will  be  '  Guilty,' 


174     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

and  the  sentence  'Death.'  Such  appre- 
hensions cannot  have  been  fixed  or  fre- 
quent in  the  mind  of  one  whose  genius 
burned  always  with  a  clearer  and  stead- 
ier flame  to  the  last.  The  jury  of  which 
you  spoke  has  met :  a  mixed  jury  and  a 
merciful.  The  verdict  is  '  Well  done,' 
and  the  sentence  Immortality  of  Fame. 
There  have  been,  there  are,  dissenters  ; 
yet  probably  they  will  be  less  and  less 
heard  as  the  years  go  on. 

One  judge,  or  juryman,  has  made  up 
his  mind  that  prose  was  your  true  prov- 
ince, and  that  your  letters  will  outlive 
your  lays.  I  know  not  whether  it  was 
the  same  or  an  equally  well  -  inspired 
critic,  who  spoke  of  your  most  perfect 
lyrics  (so  Beau  Brummell  spoke  of  his 
ill-tied  cravats)  as  'a  gallery  of  your  fail- 
ures.' But  the  general  voice  does  not 
echo  these  utterances  of  a  too  subtle  in- 
tellect. At  a  famous  University  (not 
your  own)  once  existed  a  band  of  men 
known  as  'The  Trinity  Sniffers.'  Per- 
haps the  spirit  of  the  sniffer  may  still 


PERCy  B  VSSHE  SHELLE  Y        1 7  5 

inspire  some  of  the  jurors  who  from 
time  to  time  make  themselves  heard  in 
your  case.  The  '  Quarterly  Review,'  I 
fear,  is  still  unreconciled.  It  regards 
your  attempts  as  tainted  by  the  spirit  of 
'The  Liberal  Movement  in  English  Lit- 
erature ; '  and  it  is  impossible,  alas!  to 
maintain  with  any  success  that  you  were 
a  Throne  and  Altar  Tory.  At  Oxford 
you  are  forgiven  ;  and  the  old  rooms 
where  you  let  the  oysters  burn  (was  not 
your  founder,  King  Alfred,  once  guilty 
of  similar  negligence  .^)  are  now  shown 
to  pious  pilgrims. 

But  Conservatives,  't  is  rumoured,  are 
still  averse  to  your  opinions,  and  are  be- 
lieved to  prefer  to  yours  the  works  of 
the  Reverend  Mr.  Keble,  and,  indeed,  of 
the  clergy  in  general.  But,  in  spite  of 
all  this,  your  poems,  like  the  affections 
of  the  true  lovers  in  Theocritus,  are  still 
'in  the  mouths  of  all,  and  chiefly  on  the 
lips  of  the  young.'  It  is  in  your  lyrics 
that  you  live,  and  I  do  not  mean  that 
every  one  could  pass  an  examination  in 


176     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

the  plot  of  '  Prometheus  Unbound.* 
Talking  of  this  piece,  by  the  way,  a 
Cambridge  critic  finds  that  it  reveals  in 
you  a  hankering  after  life  in  a  cave  — 
doubtless  an  unconsciously  inherited 
memory  from  cave-man.  Speaking  of 
cave-man  reminds  me  that  you  once 
spoke  of  deserting  song  for  prose,  and 
of  producing  a  history  of  the  moral,  in- 
tellectual, and  political  elements  in  hu- 
man society,  which,  we  now  agree,  be- 
gan, as  Asia  would  fain  have  ended,  in  a 
cave. 

Fortunately  you  gave  us  '  Adonais ' 
and  'Hellas'  instead  of  this  treatise,  and 
we  have  now  successfully  written  the 
natural  history  of  Man  for  ourselves. 
Science  tells  us  that  before  becoming  a 
cave-dweller  he  was  a  Brute ;  Experience 
daily  proclaims  that  he  constantly  re- 
verts to  his  original  condition.  Lhoinnte 
est  un  mediant  animal,  in  spite  of  your 
boyish  efforts  to  add  pretty  girls  '  to  the 
list  of  the  good,  the  disinterested,  and 
the  free.' 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY         1 77 

Ah,  not  in  the  wastes  of  Speculation, 
nor  the  sterile  din  of  Politics,  were  '  the 
haunts  meet  for  thee.'  Watching  the 
yellow  bees  in  the  ivy  bloom,  and  the 
reflected  pine  forest  in  the  water-pools, 
watching  the  sunset  as  it  faded,  and  the 
dawn  as  it  fired,  and  weaving  all  fair 
and  fleeting  things  into  a  tissue  where 
light  and  music  were  at  one,  that  was 
the  task  of  Shelley  !  *  To  ask  you  for 
anything  human,'  you  said,  '  was  like 
asking  for  a  leg  of  mutton  at  a  gin- 
shop.'  Nay,  rather,  like  asking  Apollo 
and  Hebe,  in  the  Olympian  abodes,  to 
give  us  beef  for  ambrosia,  and  port  for 
nectar.  Each  poet  gives  what  he  has, 
and  what  he  can  offer ;  you  spread  be- 
fore us  fairy  bread,  and  enchanted  wine, 
and  shall  we  turn  away,  with  a  sneer,  be- 
cause, out  of  all  the  multitudes  of  sing- 
ers, one  is  spiritual  and  strange,  one  has 
seen  Artemis  unveiled  }  One,  like  An- 
chises,  has  been  beloved  of  the  Goddess, 
and  his  eyes,  when  he  looks  on  the  com- 
mon world  of  common  men,  are,  like  the 
12 


178      LETTERS    TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

eyes  of  Anchises,  blind  with  excess  of 
light.  Let  Shelley  sing  of  what  he  saw, 
what  none  saw  but  Shelley  ! 

Notwithstanding  the  popularity  of 
your  poems  (the  most  romantic  of  things 
didactic),  our  world  is  no  better  than  the 
world  you  knew.  This  will  disappoint 
you,  who  had  '  a  passion  for  reforming  it' 
Kings  and  priests  are  very  much  where 
you  left  them.  True,  we  have  a  poet 
who  assails  them,  at  large,  frequently 
and  fearlessly ;  yet  Mr.  Swinburne  has 
never,  like  '  kind  Hunt,'  been  in  prison, 
nor  do  we  fear  for  him  a  charge  of  trea- 
son. Moreover,  chemical  science  has 
discovered  new  and  ingenious  ways  of 
destroying  principalities  and  powers. 
You  would  be  interested  in  the  methods, 
but  your  peaceful  Revolutionism,  which 
disdained  physical  force,  would  regret 
their  application. 

Our  foreign  affairs  are  not  in  a  state 
which  even  you  would  consider  satisfac- 
tory ;  for  we  have  just  had  to  contend 
with  a  Revolt  of  Islam,  and  we  still  find 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY         1 79 

in  Russia  exactly  the  qualities  which 
you  recognised  and  described.  We  have 
a  great  statesman  whose  methods  and 
eloquence  somewhat  resemble  those  you 
attribute  to  Laon  and  Prince  Athanase. 
Alas  !  he  is  a  youth  of  more  than  sev- 
enty summers  ;  and  not  in  his  time  will 
Prometheus  retire  to  a  cavern  and  pass 
a  peaceful  millennium  in  twining  buds 
and  beams. 

In  domestic  affairs  most  of  the  Re- 
forms you  desired  to  see  have  been  car- 
ried. Ireland  has  received  Emancipa- 
tion, and  almost  everything  else  she  can 
ask  for.  I  regret  to  say  that  she  is  still 
unhappy  ;  her  wounds  unstanched,  her 
wrongs  unforgiven.  At  home  we  have 
enfranchised  the  paupers,  and  expect 
the  most  happy  results.  Paupers  (as 
Mr.  Gladstone  says)  are  '  our  own  flesh 
and  blood,'  and,  as  we  compel  them  to 
be  vaccinated,  so  we  should  permit  them 
to  vote.  Is  it  a  dream  that  Mr.  Jesse 
Collings  (how  you  would  have  loved  that 
man  ])  has  a  Bill  for  extending  the  price- 


l80      LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

less  boon  of  the  vote  to  inmates  of  Pau- 
per Lunatic  Asylums  ?  This  may  prove 
that  last  element  in  the  Elixir  of  po- 
litical happiness  which  we  have  long 
sought  in  vain.  Atheists,  you  will  regret 
to  hear,  are  still  unpopular ;  but  the  new 
Parliament  has  done  something  for  Mr. 
Bradlaugh.  You  should  have  known  our 
Charles  while  you  were  in  the  '  Queen 
Mab  '  stage.  I  fear  you  wandered,  later, 
from  his  robust  condition  of  intellectual 
development. 

As  to  your  private  life,  many  biogra- 
phers contrive  to  make  public  as  much 
of  it  as  possible.  Your  name,  even  in 
life,  was,  alas  !  a  kind  of  ducdame  to 
bring  people  of  no  very  great  sense  into 
your  circle.  This  curious  fascination  has 
attracted  round  your  memory  a  feeble 
folk  of  commentators,  biographers,  anec- 
dotists,  and  others  of  the  tribe.  They 
swarm  round  you  like  carrion-fiies  round 
a  sensitive  plant,  like  night-birds  bewil- 
dered by  the  sun.  Men  of  sense  and 
taste  have  written  on  you,  indeed  ;  but 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY         l8l 

your  weaker  admirers  are  now  disputing 
as  to  whether  it  was  your  heart,  or  a  less 
dignified  and  most  troublesome  organ, 
which  escaped  the  flames  of  the  funeral 
pyre.  These  biographers  fight  terribly 
among  themselves,  and  vainly  prolong 
the  memory  of  'old  unhappy  far-off 
things,  and  sorrows  long  ago.'  Let  us 
leave  them  and  their  squabbles  over  what 
is  unessential,  their  raking  up  of  old  let- 
ters and  old  stories. 

The  town  has  lately  yawned  a  weary 
laugh  over  an  enemy  of  yours,  who  has 
produced  two  heavy  volumes,  styled  by 
him  'The  Real  Shelley.'  The  real  Shel- 
ley, it  appears,  was  Shelley  as  conceived 
of  by  a  worthy  gentleman  so  prejudiced 
and  so  skilled  in  taking  up  things  by  the 
wrong  handle  that  I  wonder  he  has  not 
made  a  name  in  the  exact  science  of 
Comparative  Mythology.  He  criticises 
you  in  the  spirit  of  that  Christian  Apol- 
ogist, the  Englishman  who  called  you  *  a 
damned  Atheist '  in  the  post-office  at 
Pisa     He  finds  that  you  had  *a  little 


1 82     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

turned-up  nose,'  a  feature  no  less  impor- 
tant in  his  system  than  was  the  nose  of 
Cleopatra  (according  to  Pascal)  in  the 
history  of  the  world.  To  be  in  harmony 
with  your  nose,  you  were  a  'phenome- 
nal '  liar,  an  ill-bred,  ill-born,  profligate, 
partly  insane,  an  evil-tempered  monster, 
a  self-righteous  person,  full  of  self-appro- 
bation—  in  fact  you  were  the  Beast  of 
this  pious  Apocalypse.  Your  friend  Dr. 
Lind  was  an  embittered  and  scurrilous 
apothecary,  'a  bad  old  man.*  But  enough 
of  this  inopportune  brawler. 

For  Humanity,  of  which  you  hoped 
such  great  things,  Science  predicts  ex- 
tinction in  a  night  of  Frost.  The  sun 
will  grow  cold,  slowly  —  as  slowly  as 
doom  came  on  Jupiter  in  your  '  Prome- 
theus,' but  as  surely.  If  this  nightmare 
be  fulfilled,  perhaps  the  Last  Man,  in 
some  fetid  hut  on  the  ice-bound  Equa- 
tor, will  read,  by  a  fading  lamp  charged 
with  the  dregs  of  the  oil  in  his  cruse,  the 
poetry  of  Shelley.  So  reading,  he,  the 
latest  of  his  race,  will  not  wholly  be  de- 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY         1 83 

prived  of  those  sights  which  alone  (says 
the  nameless  Greek)  make  life  worth  en- 
during. In  your  verse  he  will  have  sight 
of  sky,  and  sea,  and  cloud,  the  gold  of 
dawn  and  the  gloom  of  earthquake  and 
eclipse.  He  will  be  face  to  face,  in 
fancy,  with  the  great  powers  that  are 
dead,  sun,  and  ocean,  and  the  illimitable 
azure  of  the  heavens.  In  Shelley's  po- 
etry, while  Man  endures,  all  those  will 
survive ;  for  your  '  voice  is  as  the  voice 
of  winds  and  tides,'  and  perhaps  more 
deathless  than  all  of  these,  and  only  per- 
ishable with  the  perishing  of  the  human 
spirit. 


XVIII. 

To  Monsieur  de  MolUre,  Valet  de  Chant- 
bre  dit  Roi. 

Monsieur,  —  With  what  awe  does  a 
writer  venture  into  the  presence  of  the 
great  Moliere  !  As  a  courtier  in  your 
time  would  scratch  humbly  (with  his 
comb!)  at  the  door  of  the  Grand  Mon- 
arch, so  I  presume  to  draw  near  your 
dwelling  among  the  Immortals.  You, 
like  the  king  who,  among  all  his  titles, 
has  now  none  so  proud  as  that  of  the 
friend  of  Moliere  —  you  found  your  do- 
minions small,  humble,  and  distracted  ; 
you  raised  them  to  the  dignity  of  an  em- 
pire :  what  Louis  XIV.  did  for  France 
you  achieved  for  French  comedy  ;  and 
the  baton  of  Scapin  still  wields  its  sway 
though  the  sword  of  Louis  was  broken 
at  Blenheim.     For  the  King  the  Pyre- 


MONSIEUR  DE  MOLIERE         1 85 

nees,  or  so  he  fancied,  ceased  to  exist ; 
by  a  more  magnificent  conquest  you 
overcame  the  Channel.  If  England 
vanquished  your  country's  arms,  it  was 
through  you  that  Yxz.x\.CQferiitn  victoreni 
ccpit,  and  restored  the  dynasty  of  Com- 
edy to  the  land  whence  she  had  been 
driven.  Ever  since  Dryden  borrowed 
•  L'Etourdi,'  our  tardy  apish  nation  has 
lived  (in  matters  theatrical)  on  the  spoils 
of  the  wits  of  France. 

In  one  respect,  to  be  sure,  times  and 
manners  have  altered.  While  you  lived, 
taste  kept  the  French  drama  pure  ;  and 
it  was  the  congenial  business  of  English 
playwrights  to  foist  their  rustic  gross- 
ness  and  their  large  Fescennine  jests 
into  the  urban  page  of  Moliere.  Now 
they  are  diversely  occupied ;  and  it  is 
their  affair  to  lend  modesty  where  they 
borrow  wit,  and  to  spare  a  blush  to  the 
cheek  of  the  Lord  Chamberlain.  But 
still,  as  has  ever  been  our  wont  since 
Etherege  saw,  and  envied,  and  imitated 
your  successes  —  still  we  pilfer  the  plays 


1 86     LETTERS  TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

of  France,  and  take  our  bien,  as  you  said 
in  your  lordly  manner,  wherever  we  can 
find  it.  We  are  the  privateers  of  the 
stage ;  and  it  is  rarely,  to  be  sure,  that  a 
comedy  pleases  the  town  which  has  not 
first  been  'cut  out'  from  the  country- 
men of  Moliere.  Why  this  should  be, 
and  what  * tenebriferous  star'  (as  Para- 
celsus, your  companion  in  the  '  Dia- 
logues  des  Morts,'  would  have  believed) 
thus  darkens  the  sun  of  English  humour, 
we  know  not ;  but  certainly  our  depend- 
ence on  France  is  the  sincerest  tribute 
to  you.  Without  you,  neither  Rotrou, 
nor  Corneille,  nor  'a  wilderness  of  mon- 
keys '  like  Scarron,  could  ever  have 
given  Comedy  to  France  and  restored 
her  to  Europe. 

While  we  owe  to  you,  Monsieur,  the 
beautiful  advent  of  Comedy,  fair  and 
beneficent  as  Peace  in  the  play  of  Aris- 
tophanes, it  is  still  to  you  that  we  must 
turn  when  of  comedies  we  desire  the 
best.  If  you  studied  with  daily  and 
nightly  care   the  works  of    Plautus  and 


MOK'SIEUR  DE  MOLIMRE  1 87 

Terence,  if  you  'let  no  musty  bouquin 
escape  you  '  (so  your  enemies  declared), 
it  was  to  some  purpose  that  you  laboured, 
Shakespeare  excepted,  you  eclipsed  all 
who  came  before  you  ;  and  from  those 
that  follow,  however  fresh,  we  turn  :  we 
turn  from  Regnard  and  Beaumarchais, 
from  Sheridan  and  Goldsmith,  from  Mus- 
set  and  Pailleron  and  Labiche,  to  that 
crowded  world  of  your  creations.  '  Cre- 
ations '  one  may  well  say,  for  you  antici- 
pated Nature  herself :  you  gave  us,  be- 
fore she  did,  in  Alceste  a  Rousseau  who 
was  c.  gentleman  not  a  lacquey ;  in  a  mot 
of  Don  Juan's,  the  secret  of  the  new  Re- 
ligion and  the  watchword  of  Comte, 
r amour  de  Vhumaniti. 

Before  you  where  can  we  find,  save 
in  Rabelais,  a  Frenchman  with  humour  ; 
and  where,  unless  it  be  in  Montaigne, 
the  wise  philosophy  of  a  secular  civilisa- 
tion? With  a  heart  the  most  tender, 
delicate,  loving,  and  generous,  a  heart 
often  in  agony  and  torment,  you  had  to 
make  life  endurable  (we  cannot  doubt  it) 


1 88      LETTERS    TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

without  any  whisper  of  promise,  or  hope, 
or  warning  from  Religion.  Yes,  in  an 
age  when  the  greatest  mind  of  all,  the 
mind  of  Pascal,  proclaimed  that  the  only 
help  was  in  voluntary  blindness,  that  the 
only  chance  was  to  hazard  all  on  a  bet 
at  evens,  you.  Monsieur,  refused  to  be 
blinded,  or  to  pretend  to  see  what  you 
found  invisible. 

In  Rehgion  you  beheld  no  promise  of 
help.  When  the  Jesuits  and  Jansenists 
of  your  time  saw,  each  of  them,  in  Tar- 
tufe  the  portrait  of  their  rivals  (as  each 
of  the  laughable  Marquises  in  your  play 
conceived  that  you  were  girding  at  his 
neighbour),  you  all  the  while  were  mock- 
ing every  credulous  excess  of  Faith.  In 
the  sermons  preached  to  Agnes  we 
surely  hear  your  private  laughter ;  in 
the  arguments  for  credulity  which  are 
presented  to  Don  Juan  by  his  valet  we 
listen  to  the  eternal  self-defence  of  su- 
perstition. Thus,  desolate  of  belief,  you 
sought  for  the  permanent  element  of  life 
—  precisely  where  Pascal  recognised  all 


MONSIEUR  DE  MOLI^RE  1 89 

that  was  most  fleeting  and  unsubstan- 
tial—  in  divertissement;  in  the  pleas- 
ure of  looking  on,  a  spectator  of  the  ac- 
cidents of  existence,  an  observer  of  the 
follies  of  mankind.  Like  the  Gods  of  the 
Epicurean,  you  seem  to  regard  our  life 
as  a  play  that  is  played,  as  a  comedy ; 
yet  how  often  the  tragic  note  comes  in ! 
What  pity,  and  in  the  laughter  what 
an  accent  of  tears,  as  of  rain  in  the 
wind !  No  comedian  has  been  so  kindly 
and  human  as  you  ;  none  has  had  a 
heart,  like  you,  to  feel  for  his  butts,  and 
to  leave  them  sometimes,  in  a  sense,  su- 
perior to  their  tormentors.  Sganarelle, 
M.  de  Pourceaugnac,  George  Dandin, 
and  the  rest  —  our  sympathy,  somehow, 
is  with  them,  after  all ;  and  M.  de  Pour- 
ceaugnac is  a  gentleman,  despite  his 
misadventures. 

Though  triumphant  Youth  and  mali- 
cious Love  in  your  plays  may  batter  and 
defeat  Jealousy  and  Old  Age,  yet  they 
have  not  all  the  victory,  or  you  did  not 
mean  that  they  should  win  it.     They  go 


igO     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

off  with  laughter,  and  their  victim  with 
a  grimace  ;  but  in  him  we,  that  are  past 
our  youth,  behold  an  actor  in  an  unending 
tragedy,  the  defeat  of  a  generation.  Your 
sympathy  is  not  wholly  with  the  dogs 
that  are  having  their  day  ;  you  can  throw 
a  bone  or  a  crust  to  the  dog  that  has  had 
his,  and  has  been  taught  that  it  is  over 
and  ended.  Yourself  not  unlearned  in 
shame,  in  jealousy,  in  endurance  of  the 
wanton  pride  of  men  (how  could  the 
poor  player  and  the  husband  of  Celimene 
be  untaught  in  that  experience  ?),  you 
never  sided  quite  heartily,  as  other  com- 
edians have  done,  with  young  prosperity 
and  rank  and  power. 

I  am  not  the  first  who  has  dared  to 
approach  you  in  the  Shades  ;  for  just 
after  your  own  death  the  author  of  '  Les 
Dialogues  des  Morts  *  gave  you  Paracel- 
sus as  a  companion,  and  the  author  of 
'  Le  Jugement  de  Pluton  '  made  the 
'mighty  warder*  decide  that  *Moliere 
should  not  talk  philosophy.'  These  wri- 
ters, like  most  of  us>  feel  that,  after  all, 


MONSIEUR  DE  MOLI^RE  I91 

the  comedies  of  the  Contemplateiir,  of 
the  translator  of  Lucretius,  are  a  philos-. 
ophy  of  life  in  themselves,  and  that  in 
them  we  read  the  lessons  of  human  ex- 
perience writ  small  and  clear. 

What  comedian  but  Moliere  has  com- 
bined with  such  depths  —  with  the  indig- 
nation of  Alceste,  the  self-deception  of 
Tartufe,  the  blasphemy  of  Don  Juan  — 
such  wildness  of  irresponsible  mirth, 
such  humour,  such  wit  !  Even  now, 
when  more  than  two  hundred  years  have 
sped  by,  when  sq  much  water  has  flowed 
under  the  bridges  and  has  borne  away 
so  many  trifles  of  contemporary  mirth 
{cetera  fiuminis  ritu  ferunttir),  even  now 
we  never  laugh  so  well  as  when  Masca- 
rille  and  Vadius  and  M.  Jourdain  tread 
the  boards  in  the  Maison  de  Moliere. 
Since  those  mobile  dark  brows  of  yours 
ceased  to  make  men  laugh,  since  your 
voice  denounced  the  '  demoniac  *  man- 
ner of  contemporary  tragedians,  I  take 
leave  to  think  that  no  player  has  been 
more  worthy  to  wear  the  canons  of  Mas- 


192     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

carille  or  the  gown  of  Vadius  than  M. 
Coquelin  of  the  Comedie  Fran9aise.  In 
him  you  have  a  successor  to  your  Mas- 
carille  so  perfect,  that  the  ghosts  of  play- 
goers of  your  date  might  cry,  could  they 
see  him,  that  Moliere  had  come  again. 
But,  with  all  respect  to  the  efforts  of  the 
fair,  I  doubt  if  Mdlle.  Barthet,  or  Mdme. 
Croizette  herself,  would  reconcile  the 
town  to  the  loss  of  the  fair  De  Brie,  and 
Madeleine,  and  the  first,  the  true  Celi- 
mene,  Armande.  Yet  had  you  ever  so 
merry  a  sonbrette  as  Mdme.  Samary,  so 
exquisite  a  Nicole  .-' 

Denounced,  persecuted,  and  buried 
hugger-mugger  two  hundred  years  ago, 
you  are  now  not  over-praised,  but  more 
worshipped,  with  more  servility  and  os- 
tentation, studied  with  more  prying  cu- 
riosity than  you  may  approve.  Are  not 
the  Molieristes  a  body  who  carry  adora- 
tion to  fanaticism  .■*  Any  scrap  of  your 
handwriting  (so  few  are  these),  any  an- 
ecdote even  remotely  touching  on  your 
life,  any  fact  that  may  prove  your  house 


MONSIEUR  DE  MO  LI R  RE  193 

was  numbered  1 5  not  22,  is  eagerly  seized 
and  discussed  by  your  too  minute  his- 
torians. Concerning  your  private  life, 
these  men  often  write  more  like  mali- 
cious enemies  than  friends ;  repeating 
the  fabulous  scandals  of  Le  Boulanger, 
and  trying  vainly  to  support  them  by 
grubbing  in  dusty  parish  registers.  It 
is  most  necessary  to  defend  you  from 
your  friends  —  from  such  friends  as  the 
veteran  and  inveterate  M.  Arsene  Hous- 
saye,  or  the  industrious  but  puzzle- 
headed  M.  Loiseleur.  Truly  they  seek 
the  living  amorig  the  dead,  and  the  im- 
mortal Moliere  among  the  sweepings  of 
attorneys'  offices.  As  I  regard  them 
(for  I  have  tarried  in  their  tents)  and  as 
I  behold  their  trivialities — the  exercises 
of  men  who  neglect  Moliere's  works  to 
write  about  Moliere's  great-grandmoth- 
er's second-best  bed  —  I  sometimes  wish 
that  Moliere  were  here  to  write  on  his 
devotees  a  new  comedy,  *  Les  Molier- 
istes.'  How  fortunate  were  they.  Mon- 
sieur, who  lived  and  worked  with  you, 
13 


194     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

who  saw  you  day  by  day,  who  were  at- 
tached, as  Lagrange  tells  us,  by  the 
kindest  loyalty  to  the  best  and  most  hon- 
ourable of  men,  the  most  open-handed  in 
friendship,  in  charity  the  most  delicate, 
of  the  heartiest  sympathy !  Ah,  that 
for  one  day  I  could  behold  you,  writing 
in  the  study,  rehearsing  on  the  stage, 
musing  in  the  lace-seller's  shop,  strolling 
through  the  Palais,  turning  over  the  new 
books  at  Billaine's,  dusting  your  ruffles 
among  the  old  volumes  on  the  sunny 
stalls.  Would  that,  through  the  ages, 
we  could  hear  you  after  supper,  merry 
with  Boileau,  and  with  Racine,  —  not 
yet  a  traitor,  —  laughing  over  Chapelain, 
combining  to  gird  at  him  in  an  epigram, 
or  mocking  at  Cotin,  or  talking  your 
favourite  philosophy,  mindful  of  Des- 
cartes. Surely  of  all  the  wits  none  was 
ever  so  good  a  man,  none  ever  made  life 
so  rich  with  humour  and  friendship. 


XIX. 

To  Robert  Burns, 

Sir,  —  Among  men  of  Genius,  and  es- 
pecially among  Poets,  there  are  some  to 
whom  we  turn  with  a  peculiar  and  un- 
feigned affection  ;  there  are  others  whom 
we  admire  rather  than  love.  By  some 
we  are  won  with  our  will,  by  others  con- 
quered against  our  desire.  It  has  been 
your  peculiar  fortune  to  capture  the 
hearts  of  a  whole  people  —  a  people  not 
usually  prone  to  praise,  but  devoted  with 
a  personal  and  patriotic  loyalty  to  you 
and  to  your  reputation.  In  you  every 
Scot  who  is  a  Scot  sees,  admires,  and 
compliments  Himself,  his  ideal  self  — 
independent,  fond  of  whisky,  fonder  of 
the  lassies  ;  you  are  the  true  represen- 
tative of  him  and  of  his  nation.  Next 
year  will    be   the   hundredth  since   the 


196     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

press  of  Kilmarnock  brought  to  light  its 
solitary  masterpiece,  your  Poems  ;  and 
next  year,  therefore,  methinks,  the  rev- 
enue will  receive  a  welcome  accession 
from  the  abundance  of  whisky  drunk  in 
your  honour.  It  is  a  cruel  thing  for  any 
of  your  countrymen  to  feel  that,  where 
all  the  rest  love,  he  can  only  admire  ; 
where  all  the  rest  are  idolators,  he  may 
not  bend  the  knee ;  but  stands  apart  and 
beats  upon  his  breast,  observing,  not 
adoring — a  critic.  Yet  to  some  of  us  — 
petty  souls,  perhaps,  and  envious  —  that 
loud  indiscriminating  praise  of  *  Robbie 
Burns '  (for  so  they  style  you  in  their 
Change-house  familiarity)  has  long  been 
ungrateful  ;  and,  among  the  treasures  of 
your  songs,  we  venture  to  select  and 
even  to  reject.  So  it  must  be!  We  can- 
not all  love  Haggis,  nor  'painch,  tripe, 
and  thairm,'  and  all  those  rural  dainties 
which  you  celebrate  as  *  warm-reekin, 
rich  ! '  *  Rather  too  rich,'  as  the  Young 
Lady  said  on  an  occasion  recorded  by 
Sam  Weller. 


ROBERT  BURNS  IQ/ 

Auld  Scotland  wants  nae  skinking  ware 

That  jaups  in  luggies ; 
But,  if  ye  wish  her  gratefu'  prayer, 

Gie  her  a  Haggis  ! 

You  have  given  her  a  Haggis,  with  a 
vengeance,  and  her  '  gratefu'  prayer '  is 
yours  for  ever.  But  if  even  an  eternity 
of  partridge  may  pall  on  the  epicure,  so 
of  Haggis  too,  as  of  all  earthly  delights, 
Cometh  satiety  at  last.  And  yet  what  a 
glorious  Haggis  it  is  —  the  more  em- 
phatically rustic  and  even  Fescennine 
part  of  your  verse !  We  have  had  many 
a  rural  bard  since  Theocritus  '  watched 
the  visionary  flocks,'  but  you  are  the 
only  one  of  them  all  who  has  spoken  the 
sincere  Doric.  Yours  is  the  talk  of  the 
byre  and  the  plough-tail ;  yours  is  that 
large  utterance  of  the  early  hinds.  Even 
Theocritus  minces  matters,  save  where 
Lacon  and  Comatas  quite  outdo  the 
swains  of  Ayrshire.  '  But  thee,  Theoc- 
ritus, wha  matches } '  you  ask,  and  your- 
self out-match  him  in  this  wide  rude  re- 
gion, trodden  only  by  the  rural   Muse. 


198      LETTERS    TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

*  Thy  rural  loves  are  nature's  sel' ; '  and 
the  wooer  of  Jean  Armour  speaks  more 
like  a  true  shepherd  than  the  elegant 
Daphnis  of  the  '  Oaristys.' 

Indeed  it  is  with  this  that  moral  crit- 
ics of  your  life  reproach  you,  forgetting, 
perhaps,  that  in  your  amours  you  were 
but  as  other  Scotch  ploughmen  and 
shepherds  of  the  past  and  present.  Et- 
trick  may  still,  with  Afghanistan,  offer 
matter  for  idylls,  as  Mr.  Carlyle  (your 
antithesis,  and  the  complement  of  the 
Scotch  character)  supposed  ;  but  the 
morals  of  Ettrick  are  those  of  rural  Sic- 
ily in  old  days,  or  of  Mossgiel  in  your 
days.  Over  these  matters  the  Kirk, 
with  all  her  power,  and  the  Free  Kirk 
too,  have  had  absolutely  no  influence 
whatever.  To  leave  so  delicate  a  topic; 
you  were  but  as  other  swains,  or,  ai 
'  that  Birkie  ca'd  a  lord,'  Lord  Byron ; 
only  you  combined  (in  certain  of  your 
fetters)  a  libertine  theory  with  your  prac- 
tice ;  you  poured  out  in  song  your  auda- 
cious raptures,  your  half-hearted  repent 


ROBERT  BURNS  199 

ance,  your  shame  and  your  scorn.  You 
spoke  the  truth  about  rural  lives  and 
loves.  We  may  like  it  or  dislike  it ;  but 
we  cannot  deny  the  verity. 

Was  it  not  as  unhappy  a  thing,  Sir, 
for  you,  as  it  was  fortunate  for  Letters 
and  for  Scotland,  that  you  were  born  at 
the  meeting  of  two  ages  and  of  two 
worlds  —  precisely  in  the  moment  when 
bookish  literature  was  beginning  to  reach 
the  people,  and  when  Society  was  first 
learning  to  admit  the  low-born  to  her 
Minor  Mysteries }  Before  you  how  many 
singers  not  less  truly  poets  than  yourself 

—  though  less  versatile  not  less  passion- 
ate, though  less  sensuous  not  less  simple 

—  had  been  born  and  had  died  in  poor 
men's  cottages  !  There  abides  not  even 
the  shadow  of  a  name  of  the  old  Scotch 
song-smiths,  of  the  old  ballad  -  makers. 
The  authors  of  *  Clerk  Saunders,'  of 
♦The  Wife  of  Usher's  Well,'  of  'Fair 
Annie,'  and  '  Sir  Patrick  Spens,'  and 
*The  Bonny  Hind,'  are  as  unknown  to 
us  as  Homer,  whom  in  their  directness 


200     LETTERS  TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

and  force  they  resemble.  They  never, 
perhaps,  gave  their  poems  to  writing  • 
certainly  they  never  gave  them  to  the 
press.  On  the  lips  and  in  the  hearts  of 
the  people  they  have  their  lives ;  and 
the  singers,  after  a  life  obscure  and  un- 
troubled by  society  or  by  fame,  are  for- 
gotten. *  The  Iniquity  of  Oblivion  blindly 
scattereth  his  Poppy.' 

Had  you  been  born  some  years  earlier 
you  would  have  been  even  as  these  un- 
named Immortals,  leaving  great  verses 
to  a  little  clan  —  verses  retained  only  by 
Memory.  You  would  have  been  but  the 
minstrel  of  your  native  valley :  the  wider 
world  would  not  have  known  you,  nor 
you  the  world.  Great  thoughts  of  inde- 
pendence and  revolt  would  never  have 
burned  in  you  ;  indignation  would  not 
have  vexed  you.  Society  would  not  have 
given  and  denied  her  caresses.  You 
would  have  been  happy.  Your  songs 
would  have  lingered  in  all  '  the  circle  of 
the  summer  hills  ; '  and  your  scorn,  your 
satire,  your  narrative  verse,  would  have 


ROBERT  BURNS  20I 

been  unwritten  or  unknown.  To  the 
world  what  a  loss  !  and  what  a  gain  to 
you !  We  should  have  possessed  but  a 
few  of  your  lyrics,  as 

When  o'er  the  hill  the  eastern  star 

•     Tells  bughtin-time  is  near,  my  jo ; 

And  owsen  frae  the  furrowed  field, 

Return  sae  dowf  and  wearie  O  ! 

How  noble  that  is,  how  natural,  how  un- 
consciously Greek !  You  found,  oddly, 
in  good  Mrs.  Barbauld,  the  merits  of  the 
Tenth  Muse: 

In  thy  sweet  sang,  Barbauld,  survives 
Even  Sappho's  flame  ! 

But  how  unconsciously  you  remind  us 
both  of  Sappho  and  of  Homer  in  these 
strains  about  the  Evening  Star  and  the 
hour  when  the  Day  /Aerevio-o-cTo  fSovXv 
Toi'Se  ?  Had  you  lived  and  died  the  pas- 
toral poet  of  some  silent  glen,  such  lyr- 
ics could  not  but  have  survived  ;  free, 
too,  of  all  that  in  your  songs  reminds  us 
of  the  Poet's  Corner  in  the  '  Kirkcud- 
bright Advertiser.'  We  should  not  have 
read  how 


202     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

Phoebus,  gilding  the  brow  o'  moming, 
Banishes  ilk  darksome  shade  I 

Still  we  might  keep  a  love-poem  unex- 
celled by  Catullus, 

Had  we  never  loved  sae  kindly, 
Had  we  never  loved  sae  blindly. 
Never  met  —  or  never  parted, 
We  had  ne'er  been  broken-hearted. 

But  the  letters  to  Clarinda  would  have 
been  unwritten,  and  the  thrush  would 
have  been  untaught  in  '  the  style  of  the 
Bird  of  Paradise.' 

A  quiet  life  of  song,  fallentis  sctnita 
vitcB,  was  not  to  be  yours.  Fate  other- 
wise decreed  it.  The  touch  of  a  lettered 
society,  the  strife  with  the  Kirk,  discon- 
tent with  the  State,  poverty  and  pride, 
neglect  and  success,  were  needed  to 
make  your  Genius  what  it  was,  and  to 
endow  the  world  with  'Tam  o'  Shanter,' 
the  'Jolly  Beggars,' and  'Holy  Willie's 
Prayer.'  Who  can  praise  them  too 
highly  —  who  admire  in  them  too  much 
the  humour,  the  scorn,  the  wisdom,  the 
unsurpassed   energy  and  courage }    So 


ROBERT  BURNS  203 

powerful,  so  commanding,  is  the  move- 
ment of  that  Beggars'  Chorus,  that,  me- 
thinks,  it  unconsciously  echoed  in  the 
brain  of  our  greatest  living  poet  when 
he  conceived  the  Vision  of  Sin.  You 
shall  judge  for  yourself.     Recall : 

Here  's  to  budgets,  bags,  and  wallets  ! 

Here  's  to  all  the  wandering  train  ! 
Here  's  our  ragged  bairns  and  callets  ! 

One  and  all  cry  out.  Amen  ! 

A  fig  for  those  by  law  protected  ! 

Liberty  's  a  glorious  feast ! 
Courts  for  cowards  were  erected  ! 

Churches  built  to  please  the  priest  I 

Then  read  this : 

Drink  to  lofty  hopes  that  cool  — 

Visions  of  a  perfect  state  : 
Drink  we,  last,  the  public  fool. 

Frantic  love  and  frantic  hate. 


Drink  to  Fortune,  drink  to  Chance^ 

While  we  keep  a  little  breath  ! 
Drink  to  heavy  Ignorance 

Hob  and  nob  with  brother  Death  ! 

Is  not  the  movement  the  same,  though 
the  modern  speaks  a  wilder  reckless- 
ness ? 


204      LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

So  in  the  best  company  we  leave  you, 
who  were  the  Hfe  and  soul  of  so  much 
company,  good  and  bad.  No  poet,  since 
the  Psalmist  of  Israel,  ever  gave  the 
world  more  assurance  of  a  man  ;  none 
lived  a  life  more  strenuous,  engaged  in 
an  eternal  conflict  of  the  passions,  and 
by  them  overcome  —  'mighty  and  might- 
ily fallen.'  When  we  think  of  you,  By- 
ron seems,  as  Plato  would  have  said,  re- 
mote by  one  degree  from  actual  truth, 
and  Musset  by  a  degree  more  remote 
than  Byron. 


XX. 

To  Lord  Byron. 

My  Lord, 

(Do    you   remember   how   Leigh 
Hunt 
Enraged  you  once  by  writing  My  dear 
Byro7i  ?) 
Books  have  their  fates,  —  as  mortals 
have  who  punt, 
And  yours  have  entered   on  an  age  of 
iron. 
Critics  there  be  who  think  your  satin 
blunt. 
Your  pathos,  fudge  ;  such  perils  must 

environ 
Poets  who  in  their  time  were  quite  the 

rage. 
Though  now  there 's  not  a  soul  to  turn 
their  page. 


206     LETTERS   TO  DEAD   AUTHORS 

Yes,  there  is  much  dispute  about  your 

worth, 
And  much  is  said  which  you  might 

like  to  know 
By  modern  poets  here  upon  the  earth, 
Where  poets  live,  and  love  each  other 

so  ; 
And,   in   Elysium,   it   may  move   your 

mirth 
To    hear  of    bards   that    pitch  your 

praises  low, 
Though   there   be   some  that  for  your 

credit  stickle, 
As  —  Glorious  Mat,  —  and  not  inglori- 
ous Nichol. 

This  kind  of  writing  is  my  pet  aversion, 
I  hate  the  slang,  I  hate  the  personali- 
ties, 
I  loathe  the  aimless,  reckless,  loose  dis- 
persion. 
Of  every  rhyme  that  in  the  singer's 
wallet  is, 
I  hate  it  as  you  hated  the  Excursion, 
But,  while  no  man  a  hero  to  his  valet 
is, 


LORD  BYRON.  20/ 

The  hero  's  still  the  model  ;  I  indite 
The  kind  of  rhymes  that  Byron  oft  would 
write. 

There's  a  Swiss  critic  whom  I  cannot 

rhyme  to, 
One    Scherer,  dry   as    sawdust,   grim 

and  prim. 
Of  him  there 's  much  to  say,  if  I  had 

time  to 
Concern  myself  in  any  wise  with  him. 
He  seems  to  hate  the  heights  he  cannot 

climb  to. 
He  thinks  your  poetry  a  coxcomb's 

whim, 
A  good  deal  of  his  sawdust  he  has  spilt 

on 
Shakspeare,  and  Moliere,  and  you,  and 

Milton. 

Ay,  much  his   temper  is  like  Vivien's 
mood, 
Which  found  not  Galahad  pure,  nor 
Lancelot  brave ; 
Cold  as  a  hailstorm  on  an  April  wood, 
He  buries  poets  in  an  icy  grave, 


208      LETTERS    TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

His  Essays  —  he  of  the  Genevan  hood ! 
Nothing  so  good,  but  better  doth  he 

crave. 
So  stupid  and  so  solemn  in  his  spite 
He  dares  to  print  that  Moli^re  could  not 

write ! 

Enough  of  these  excursions  ;  I  was  say- 
ing 
That  half  our  English  Bards  are  turned 
Reviewers, 

And  Arnold  was  discussing  and  assay- 
ing 
The  weight  and  value  of  that  work  of 
yours, 

Examining  and  testing  it  and  weighing, 
And  proved,  the  gems  are  pure,  the 
gold  endures. 

While  Swinburne  cries  with  an  exceed- 
ing joy, 

The  stones  are  paste,  and  half  the  gold, 
alloy. 

In   Byron,   Arnold    finds   the    greatest 
force, 


LORD  BYRON  209 

Poetic,  in  this  later  age  of  ours 
His   song,  a  torrent  from   a  mountain 
source. 
Clear  as  the  crystal,  singing  with  the 
showers, 
Sweeps  to  the  sea  in  unrestricted  course 
Through  banks   o'erhung  with  rocks 
and  sweet  with  flowers  ; 
None  of  your  brooks  that  modestly  me- 
ander. 
But  swift  as  Awe  along  the  Pass  of 
Brander. 

And  when   our  century  has   clomb   its 
crest. 
And  backward  gazes  o'er  the  plains  of 
Time, 
And  counts  its  harvest,  yours  is  still  the 
best. 
The    richest   garner  in   the   field   of 
rhyme 
(The  metaphoric  mixture,  't  is  confest, 
Is  all  my  own,  and  is  not  quite  sub- 
lime). 
But  fame 's  not  yours  alone ;  you  must 
divide  all 


2IO     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

The  plums  and  pudding  with  the  Bard 
of  Rydal  ! 

Wordsworth    and    Byron,    these    the 
lordly  names 
And  these  the  gods  to  whom  most  in- 
cense burns. 
*  Absurd  !  '  cries  Swinburne,  and  in  an- 
ger flames, 
And  in  an  ^Eschylean  fury  spurns 
With  impious  foot  your  altar,  and  ex- 
claims 
And  wreathes  his  laurels  on  the  golden 
urns 
Where  Coleridge's  and  Shelley's  ashes 

lie, 
Deaf  to  the  din  and  heedless  of  the  cry. 

For  Byron  (Swinburne  shouts)  has  never 
woven 
One  honest  thread  of  life  within  his 
song ; 
As  Offenbach  is  to  divine  Beethoven 
So    Byron    is    to    Shelley   {This    is 
strong !), 


LORD  BYRON  211 

And  on  Parnassus'  peak,  divinely  cloven, 
He  may  not  stand,  or  stands  by  cruel 

wrong ; 
For   Byron's   rank  (the   Examiner   has 

reckoned) 
Is  in  the  third  class  or  a  feeble  second. 

*  A  Bernesque  poet '  at  the  very  most, 
And  never  earnest  save  in  politics  — 

The  Pegasus  that  he  was  wont  to  boast 
A   blundering,   floundering    hackney, 
full  of  tricks, 

A  beast  that  must  be  driven  to  the  post 
By  whips   and   spurs   and  oaths  and 
kicks  and  sticks, 

A  gasping,  ranting,  broken- winded  brute, 

That  any  judge  of  Pegasi  would  shoot ; 

In  sooth,  a  half-bred  Pegasus,  and  far 
gone 
In  spavin,  curb,  and  half  a  hundred 
woes. 
And  Byron's  style  is  *  jolter-headed  jar- 
gon;' 
His  verse  is  'only  bearable  in  prose/ 


212    LETTERS  TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

So  living  poets  write  of  those  that  are 

gone, 
And  o'er  the  Eagle  thus  the  Bantam 

crows ; 
And  Swinburne  ends  where  Verisopht 

began, 
By  owning  you  *a  very  clever  man.' 

Or  rather  does  not  end :  he  still  must 
utter 
A  quantity  of  the  unkindest  things. 
Ah  !  were  you  here,  I  marvel,  would  you 
flutter 
O'er  such  a  foe  the  tempest  of  your 
wings  ? 
*Tis  'rant  and  cant  and  glare  and  splash 
and  splutter ' 
That  rend  the  modest  air  when  Byron 
sings. 
There  Swinburne  stops  :  a  critic  rather 

fiery. 
Animis  ccelestibus  tantcmie  ires? 

But  whether  he  or  Arnold  in  the  right 
is, 


LORD  BYRON  21 3 

Long  is   the  argument,   the  quarrel 
long; 
Non  nobis  est  to  settle  tantas  lites  ; 

No  poet  I,  to  judge  of  right  or  wrong : 
But  of  all  things  I  always  think  a  fight 
is 
The  most  unpleasant  in  the  lists  of 
song; 
When  Marsyas  of  old  was  flayed,  Apollo 
Set  an   example   which   we    need    not 
follow. 

The  fashion  changes  !  Maidens  do  not 
wear. 
As  once  they  wore,  in  necklaces  and 
lockets 
A  curl  ambrosial  of  Lord  Byron's  hair ; 
'Don  Juan '  is  not  always  in  our  pock- 
ets — 
Nay,  a  New  Writer's  readers  do  not  care 
Much  for  your  verse,  but  are  inclined 
to  mock  its 
Manners   and   morals.      Ay,   and   most 

young  ladies 
To  yours  prefer  the  'Epic'   called   'of 
Hades'! 


214     LETTERS  TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

I  do  not  blame  them ;   I  'm  inclined  to 

think 
That  with  the  reigning  taste  *t  is  vain 

to  quarrel, 
And  Burns  might  teach  his  votaries  to 

drink, 
And  Byron  never  meant  to  make  them 

moral. 
You  yet  have  lovers  true,  who  will  not 

shrink 
From  lauding  you  and  giving  you  the 

laurel ; 
The  Germans  too,  those  men  of  blood 

and  iron. 
Of  all  our  poets  chiefly  swear  by  Byron. 

Farewell,   thou  Titan    fairer   than    the 
gods  ! 
Farewell,    farewell,    thou    swift    and 
lovely  spirit. 
Thou   splendid  warrior  with   the  world 
at  odds, 
Unpraised,   unpraisable,   beyond    thy 
merit ; 
Chased,  like  Orestes,  by  the  furies'  rods, 


LORD  BYRON  21 5 

Like  him  at  length  thy  peace  dost 
thou  inherit  ; 

Beholding  whom,  men  think  how  fairer 
far 

Than  all  the  steadfast  stars  the  wander- 
ing star !  ^ 

^  Mr.  Swinburne's  and  Mr.  Arnold's  diverse  views 
of  Byron  will  be  found  in  the  Selections  by  Mr.  Arnold 
and  in  the  Nineteenth  Century, 


XXI. 

To  Omar  Khayyam. 

Wise  Omar,  do  the  Southern   Breezes 

fling 
Above   your    Grave,    at   ending   of   the 

Spring, 
The   Snowdrift   of   the  petals  of   the 

Rose, 
The  wild  white  Roses  you  were  wont  to 

sing  ? 

Far  in  the  South  I  know  a  Land  divine,^ 

And  there  is  many  a  Saint  and  many  a 

Shrine, 

And  over  all  the  shrines  the  Blossom 

blows 

Of  Roses  that  were  dear  to  you  as  wine. 

1  The  hills  above  San  Remo,  where  rose-bushes 
are  planted  by  the  shrines.  Omar  desired  that  his 
grave  might  be  where  the  wind  would  scatter  rose- 
leaves  over  it. 


OMAR  KHAYYAM  21/ 

You  were  a  Saint  of  unbelieving  days, 
Liking  your  Life  and   happy  in  men's 

Praise ; 
Enough  for  you  the   Shade   beneath 

the  Bough, 
Enough  to  watch  the  wild  World  go  its 

Ways. 

Dreadless  and  hopeless  thou  of  Heaven 

or  Hell, 
Careless  of  Words  thou  hadst  not  Skill 

to  spell. 
Content  to  know  not  all  thou  knowest 

now. 
What 's  Death  ?    Doth  any  Pitcher  dread 

the  Well  ? 

The  Pitchers  we,  whose  Maker  makes 

them  ill. 
Shall  He  torment  them  if  they  chance 

to  spill  ? 
Nay,  like  the  broken  potsherds  are  we 

cast 
Forth  and  forgotten,  —  and  what  will  be 

will! 


2l8     LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

So  Still  were  we,  before  the  Months  be- 
gan 

That  rounded  us  and  shaped  us  into  Man, 
So  still  we  shall  be,  surely,  at  the 
last, 

Dreamless,  untouched  of  Blessing  or  of 
Ban! 

Ah,  strange  it  seems  that  this  thy  com- 
mon thought  — 

How  all  things  have  been,  ay,  and  shall 
be  nought  — 
Was  ancient  Wisdom  in  thine  ancient 
East, 

In  those  old  Days  when  Senlac  fight  was 
fought. 

Which  gave  our  England  for  a  captive 

Land 
To  pious  Chiefs  of  a  believing  Band, 

A  gift  to  the  Believer  from  the  Priest, 
Tossed  from  the  holy  to  the  blood-red 

Handli 

*  Omar  was  contemporary  with  the  battle  of  Hast- 
ings. 


OMAR  KHAYYAM.  219 

Yea,  thou  wert  singing  when  that  Arrow 
clave 

Through   helm   and  brain   of  him  who 
could  not  save 
His  England,  even  of    Harold    God- 
win's son  ; 

The  high  tide  murmurs  by  the  Hero's 
grave  !  ^ 

And  thou  wert  wreathing  Roses  —  who 
can  tell  ?  — 

Or  chanting  for  some  girl  that  pleased 
thee  well. 
Or  satst  at  wine  in    Nashapur,  when 
dun 

The  twilight  veiled  the  field  where  Har- 
old fell ! 

The  salt  Sea-waves  above  him  rage  and 

roam! 
Along  the  white  Walls  of  his  guarded 

Home 

^  Per  mandata  Ducis,  Rex  hie,  Heralde,  quteseis, 
Ut  custos  maneas  littoris  et  pelagi. 


220      LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

No  Zephyr  stirs  the  Rose,  but  o'er  the 
wave 
The  wild  Wind  beats  the  Breakers  into 
Foam  ! 

And  dear  to   him,  as   Roses  were   to 

thee, 
Rings  long  the  Roar  of  Onset  of  the 

Sea ; 
The  Swans  Path  of  his  Fathers  is  his 

grave : 
His  sleep,  methinks,  is  sound  as  thine 

can  be. 

His  was  the  Age  of  Faith,  when  all  the 

West 
Looked  to  the  Priest  for  torment  or  for 

rest; 
And  thou  wert  living  then,  and  didst 

not  heed 
The  Saint  who  banned  thee  or  the  Saint 

who  blessed ! 

Ages  of  Progress !    These  eight  hun- 
dred years 


OMAR  KHAYYAM  221 

Hath  Europe  shuddered  with  her  hopes 
or  fears, 
And  now !  —  she  listens  in  the  wilder- 
ness 

To  thee,  and   half    believeth  what    she 
hears  ! 

Hadst  thou  the  Secret  ?    Ah,  and  who 

may  tell  ? 
'An  hour  we  have,*  thou  saidst.     *Ah, 

waste  it  well ! ' 
An  hour  we  have,  and  yet  Eternity 
Looms    o'er    us,   and    the    thought  of 

Heaven  or  Hell ! 

Nay,  we  can  never  be  as  wise  as  thou, 
O    idle    singer    'neath    the    blossomed 

bough. 
Nay,  and   we   cannot   be   content   to 

die. 
We  cannot  shirk  the  questions  *  Where  ? ' 

and  *  How  ? ' 

Ah,  not  from  learned   Peace  and  gay 

Content 


222      LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

Shall  we  of  England   go   the  way   he 

went  — 
The  Singer  of  the  Red  Wine  and  the 

Rose  — 
Nay,  otherwise  than  his  our    Day  is 

spent ! 

Serene  he  dwelt  in  fragrant  Nashapflr, 
But  we  must  wander  while  the  Stars 

endure. 
He  knew  the  Secret  :  we  have  none 

that  knows, 
No  Man  so  sure  as  Omar  once  was  sure ! 


XXII. 

To  Q.  Horatitis  Flaccus. 

In  what  manner  of  Paradise  are  we  to 
conceive  that  you,  Horace,  are  dwelling, 
or  what  region  of  immortality  can  give 
you  such  pleasures  as  this  life  afforded  ? 
The  country  and  the  town,  nature  and 
men,  who  knew  them  so  well  as  you,  or 
who  ever  so  wisely  made  the  best  of 
those  two  worlds  ?  Truly  here  you  had 
good  things,  nor  do  you  ever,  in  all  your 
poems,  look  for  more  delight  in  the  life 
beyond  ;  you  never  expect  consolation 
for  present  sorrow,  and  when  you  once 
have  shaken  hands  with  a  friend  the  part- 
ing seems  to  you  eternal. 

Quis  desiderio  sit  pudor  aut  modus 
Tam  cari  capitis  ? 

So    you   sing,  for   the    dear  head  you 
mourn  has  sunk  for  ever  beneath  the 


224    LETTERS   TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

wave.  Virgil  might  wander  forth  bear- 
ing the  golden  branch  'the  Sibyl  doth  to 
singing  men  allow,'  and  might  visit,  as 
one  not  wholly  without  hope,  the  dim 
dwellings  of  the  dead  and  the  unborn. 
To  him  was  it  permitted  to  see  and  sing 
*  mothers  and  men,  and  the  bodies  out-. 
worn  of  mighty  heroes,  boys  and  un- 
wedded  maids,  and  young  men  borne  to 
the  funeral  fire  before  their  parents'  eyes.' 
The  endless  caravan  swept  past  him  — 
'many  as  fluttering  leaves  that  drop  and 
fall  in  autumn  woods  when  the  first  frost 
begins ;  many  as  birds  that  flock  land- 
ward from  the  great  sea  when  now  the 
chill  year  drives  them  o'er  the  deep 
and  leads  them  to  sunnier  lands.'  Such 
things  was  it  given  to  the  sacred  poet  to 
behold,  and  the  happy  seats  and  sweet 
pleasances  of  fortunate  souls,  where  the 
larger  light  clothes  all  the  plains  and 
dips  them  in  a  rosier  gleam,  plains  with 
their  own  new  sun  and  stars  before  un- 
known. Ah,  not  fntstra  pins -w^is  Virgil, 
as  you  say,  Horace,  in  your  melancholy 


Q.  HORATIUS  FLACCUS  22$ 

song.  In  him,  we  fancy,  there  was  a 
happier  mood  than  your  melancholy  pa- 
tience. '  Not,  though  thou  wert  sweeter 
of  song  than  Thracian  Orpheus,  with 
that  lyre  whose  lay  led  the  dancing  trees, 
not  so  would  the  blood  return  to  the 
empty  shade  of  him  whom  once  with 
dread  wand  the  inexorable  god  hath 
folded  with  his  shadowy  flocks ;  but  pa- 
tience lighteneth  what  heaven  forbids  us 
to  undo.' 

Durum,,  sed  levius  fit patientia  ! 

It  was  all  your  philosophy  in  that  last 
sad  resort  to  which  we  are  pushed  so 
often  — 

•  With  close-lipped  Patience  for  our  only  friend, 
Sad  Patience,  too  near  neighbour  of  Despair.' 

The  Epicurean  is  at  one  with  the 
Stoic  at  last,  and  Horace  with  Marcus 
Aurelius.  'To  go  away  from  among 
men,  if  there  are  gods,  is  not  a  thing  to 
be  afraid  of ;  but  if  indeed  they  do  not 
exist,  or  if  they  have  no  concern  about 
human  affairs,  what  is  it  to  me  to  live  in 


226    LETTERS  TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

a  universe  devoid  of  gods  or  devoid  of 
providence  ?  * 

An  excellent  philosophy,  but  easier  to 
those  for  whom  no  Hope  had  dawn  or 
seemed  to  set.  Yet  it  is  harder  than 
common,  Horace,  for  us  to  think  of  you, 
still  glad  somewhere,  among  rivers  like 
Liris  and  plains  and  vine-clad  hills,  that 

Solemque  suum,  sua  sidera  norunt. 

It  is  hard,  for  you  looked  for  no  such 
thing. 

Omnes  una  manet  nox 
Et  calcanda  semel  via  leti. 

You  could  not  tell  Maecenas  that  you 
would  meet  him  again  ;  you  could  only 
promise  to  tread  the  dark  path  with  him. 

Ibimus,  ibimus, 
Utcunque  prcecedes,  supremum 
Carper e  iter  com  ties  parati. 

Enough,  Horace,  of  these  mortuary 
musings.  You  loved  the  lesson  of  the 
roses,  and  now  and  again  would  speak 
somewhat  like  a  death's  head  over  thy 
temperate    cups    of    Sabine    ordinaire. 


Q.  HORATIUS  FLACCUS  22/ 

Your  melancholy  moral  was  but  meant 
to  heighten  the  joy  of  thy  pleasant  life, 
when  wearied  Italy,  after  all  her  wars 
and  civic  bloodshed,  had  won  a  peaceful 
haven.  The  harbour  might  be  treach- 
erous ;  the  prince  might  turn  to  the 
tyrant  ;  far  away  on  the  wide  Roman 
marches  might  be  heard,  as  it  were, 
the  endless,  ceaseless  monotone  of  beat- 
ing horses'  hoofs  and  marching  feet  of 
men.  They  were  coming,  they  were  near- 
ing,  like  footsteps  heard  on  wool ;  there 
was  a  sound  of  multitudes  and  millions 
of  barbarians,  all  the  North,  officina  gen- 
tium, mustering  and  marshalling  her  peo- 
ples. But  their  coming  was  not  to  be  to- 
day, nor  to-morrow ;  nor  to-day  was  the 
budding  princely  sway  to  blossom  into 
the  blood-red  flower  of  Nero.  In  the 
lull  between  the  two  tempests  of  Repub- 
lic and  Empire  your  odes  sound  'like 
linnets  in  the  pauses  of  the  wind.' 

What  joy  there  is  in  these  songs ! 
what  delight  of  life,  what  an  exquisite 
Hellenic  grace  of  art,  what  a  manly  na- 


228     LETTERS  TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

ture  to  endure,  what  tenderness  and 
constancy  of  friendship,  what  a  sense  of 
all  that  is  fair  in  the  glittering  stream, 
the  music  of  the  waterfall,  the  hum  of 
bees,  the  silvery  grey  of  the  olive  woods 
on  the  hillside !  How  human  are  all 
your  verses,  Horace !  what  a  pleasure  is 
yours  in  the  straining  poplars,  swaying 
in  the  wind !  what  gladness  you  gain 
from  the  white  crest  of  Soracte,  beheld 
through  the  fluttering  snowflakes  while 
the  logs  are  being  piled  higher  on  the 
hearth.  You  sing  of  women  and  wine 
—  not  all  whole-hearted  in  your  praise 
of  them,  perhaps,  for  passion  frightens 
you,  and  't  is  pleasure  more  than  love 
that  you  commend  to  the  young.  Lydia 
and  Glycera,  and  the  others,  are  but 
passing  guests  of  a  heart  at  ease  in  it- 
self, and  happy  enough  when  their  facile 
reign  is  ended.  You  seem  to  me  like  a 
man  who  welcomes  middle  age,  and  is 
more  glad  than  Sophocles  was  to  'flee 
from  these  hard  masters '  the  passions. 
In  the  'fallow  leisure  of  life  you  glance 


Q.  HORATIUS  FLACCUS.  229 

round  contented,  and  find  all  very  good 
save  the  need  to  leave  all  behind.  Even 
that  you  take  with  an  Italian  good-hu- 
mour, as  the  folk  of  your  sunny  country 
bear  poverty  and  hunger. 

Durtim,  sed  levins  fit  patientia  I 

To  them,  to  you,  the  loveliness  of  your 
land  is,  and  was,  a  thing  to  live  for. 
None  of  the  Latin  poets  your  fellows, 
or  none  but  Virgil,  seem  to  me  to  have 
known  so  well  as  you,  Horace,  how 
happy  and  fortunate  a  thing  it  was  to 
be  born  in  Italy.  You  do  not  say  so, 
like  your  Virgil,  in  one  splendid  passage, 
numbering  the  glories  of  the  land  as  a 
lover  might  count  the  perfections  of  his 
mistress.  But  the  sentiment  is  ever  in 
your  heart  and  often  on  your  lips. 

Me  nee  tam  patiens  Lacedaemon, 
Nee  tam  Larissae  percussit  campus  opimae, 

Quam  domus  Albuneae  resonantis 
Et  praeceps  Anio,  ac  Tiburni  lucus,  et  uda 

Mobilibus  pomaria  rivis.^ 

^  '  Me  neither  resolute  Sparta  nor  the  rich  Laris- 
saean  plain  so  enraptures  as  the  fane  of  echoing  Albu- 


230     LETTERS  TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

So  a  poet  should  speak,  and  to  every 
singer  his  own  land  should  be  dearest. 
Beautiful  is  Italy  with  the  grave  and 
delicate  outlines  of  her  sacred  hills,  her 
dark  groves,  her  little  cities  perched  like 
eyries  on  the  crags,  her  rivers  gliding 
under  ancient  walls ;  beautiful  is  Italy, 
her  seas,  and  her  suns  :  but  dearer  to  me 
the  long  grey  wave  that  bites  the  rock 
below  the  minster  in  the  north  ;  dearer 
is  the  barren  moor  and  black  peat-water 
swirling  in  tanny  foam,  and  the  scent  of 
bog  myrtle  and  the  bloom  of  heather, 
and,  watching  over  the  lochs,  the  green 
round-shouldered  hills. 

In  affection  for  your  native  land,  Hor- 
ace, certainly  the  pride  in  great  Romans 
dead  and  gone  made  part,  and  you  were, 
in  all  senses,  a  lover  of  your  country, 
your  country's  heroes,  your  country's 
gods.  None  but  a  patriot  could  have 
sung  that  ode  on  Regulus,  who  died,  as 
our  own  hero  died,  on  an  evil  day  for  the 

nea,  the  headlong  Anio,  the  grove  of  Tibur,  the  or 
chards  watered  by  the  wandering  rills.' 


Q.  If O  J? A  Tiers  FLA  ecus  23 1 

honour  of  Rome,  as  Gordon  for  the  hon- 
our of  England. 

Fertur  pudicae  conjujis  osculum, 
Parvosque  natos,  ut  capitis  minor, 
Ab  se  removisse,  et  virilem 
Torvus  humi  posuisse  voltum : 

Donee  labantes  consilio  patres 
Firmaret  auctor  nunquam  alias  dato, 
Interque  masrentes  amicos 
Egregius  properaret  exul. 

Atqui  sciebat,  quae  sibi  barbarus 
Tortor  pararet :  non  aliter  tamen 
Dimovit  obstantes  propinquos, 
Et  populum  reditus  morantem, 

Quam  si  clientum  longa  negotia 
Dijudicata  lite  relinqueret, 
Tendens  Venafranos  in  agros 
Aut  Lacedasmonium  Tarentum.^ 

1  '  They  say  he  put  aside  from  him  the  pure  lips  of 
his  wife  and  his  little  children,  like  a  man  unfree,  and 
with  his  brave  face  bowed  earthward  sternly  he  waited 
till  with  such  counsel  as  never  mortal  gave  he  might 
strengthen  the  hearts  of  the  Fathers,  and  through  his 
mourning  friends  go  forth,  a  hero,  into  exile.  Yet 
well  he  knew  what  things  were  being  prepared  for  him 
at  the  hands  of  the  tormenters,  who,  none  the  less,  put 
aside  the  kinsmen  that  barred  his  path  and  the  people 


232     LETTERS   TO   DEAD  AUTHORS 

We  talk  of  the  Greeks  as  your  teach- 
ers. Your  teachers  they  were,  but  that 
poem  could  only  have  been  written  by  a 
Roman !  The  strength,  the  tenderness, 
the  noble  and  monumental  resolution 
and  resignation  —  these  are  the  gift  of 
the  lords  of  human  things,  the  masters  of 
the  world. 

Your  country's  heroes  are  dear  to  you, 
Horace,  but  you  did  not  sing  them  bet- 
ter than  your  country's  Gods,  the  pious 
protecting  spirits  of  the  hearth,  the  farm, 
the  field,  kindly  ghosts,  it  may  be,  of 
Latin  fathers  dead  or  Gods  framed  in  the 
image  of  these.  What  you  actually  be- 
lieved we  know  xvol^you  knew  not.  Who 
knows  what  he  believes  .<*  Parens  Deo- 
rum  alitor  you  bowed  not  often,  it  may 
be,  in  the  temples  of  the  state  religion 
and  before  the  statues  of  the  great  Olym- 
pians ;  but  the  pure  and  pious  worship 

that  would  fain  have  held  him  back,  passing  through 
their  midst  as  he  might  have  done,  if,  his  retainers' 
weary  business  ended  and  the  suits  adjudged,  he  were 
faring  to  his  Venafran  lands  or  to  Dorian  Tarentum.' 


Q.  HO  RATI  US  FLA  ecus  233 

of  rustic  tradition,  the  faith  handed 
down  by  the  homely  elders,  with  that 
you  never  broke.  Clean  hands  and  a 
pure  heart,  these,  with  a  sacred  cake  and 
shining  grains  of  salt,  you  could  offer  to 
the  Lares.  It  was  a  benignant  religion, 
uniting  old  times  and  new,  men  living 
and  men^long  dead  and  gone,  in  a  kind 
of  service  and  sacrifice  solemn  yet  fa- 
miliar. 

Te  nihil  attinet 
Tentare  multa  cade  bidentium 
Parvos  coronantem  marino 
Rare  deos  fragilique  myrto, 

Immuttis  aram  si  tetigit  manus, 
Non  sumptuosa  blandior  hostia 
Mollivit  aversos  Penates 
Farre  pio  et  saliente  tnica}- 


1  'Thou,  Phidyle,  hast  no  need  to  besiege  the  gods 
with  slaughter  so  great  of  sheep,  thou  who  crownest 
thy  tiny  deities  with  myrtle  rare  and  rosemary.  If  but 
the  hand  be  clean  that  touches  the  altar,  then  richest 
sacrifice  will  not  more  appease  the  angered  Penates 
than  the  duteous  cake  and  salt  that  crackles  in  the 
olaze.' 


234     LETTERS  TO  DEAD  AUTHORS 

Farewell,  dear  Horace ;  farewell,  thou 
wise  and  kindly  heathen  ;  of  mortals  the 
most  human,  the  friend  of  my  friends 
and  of  so  many  generations  of  men. 


ESSAYS 


LITERARY,  SOCIAL,  HISTORICAL, 

MUSICAL,   'BIOGRAPHICAL, 

DRAMATIC,  POLITICAL 


BY 


Stevenson 

Carlyle 

SCHERER 

Froude 

BiRRELL 

Gladstone 

Lang 

Henley 

Holland 

Ik  Marvel 

H.  Adams 

Matthews 

Brownell 

Boyesen 

R.  Grant 

FiNCK 

Max  Muller 

Lanier 

George  Moore 

T.  N.  Page 

AND 

others 

Charles  5cribner's  Sons,  Publishers 
743-745  Broadway,  New  York 


'»»»>»»» v list  of  volumes  of 
essaVs  on  literature,  art, 
music,  etc.,  published  by 
charles  scribner's  sojsts,  743-745 

BROADWA  V,  NEW  y6>igir.(<<««««<» 

HENRY  ADAMS. 

Historical  Essays.     (i2mo,  $2.00.) 

Contents  :  Primitive  Rights  of  Women — Captaine  John 
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New  York  Gold  Conspiracy — The  Session,  1869-1870. 

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judicial  in  tone,  broad  of  view,  picturesque  and  impressive  in 
description,  nervous  and  expressive  in  style.  His  character- 
izations are  terse,  pointed,  clear." — Ntw  York  Tribunt. 

AUGUSTINE    BIRRELL. 

Obiter  Dicta,  First  Series.     (i6mo,  $1.00.) 

Contents  :  Carlyle — On  the  Alleged  Obscurity  of  Mr. 
Browning's  Poetry — Truth  Hunting — Actors — A  Rogue's 
Memoirs — The  Via  Media — Falstaff. 

"  Some  admirably  written  essays,  amusing  and  brilliant.    The 
book  is  the  book  of  a  highly  cultivated  man,  with  a  real  gift  ok 
^        expression,  a  good  deal  of  humor,  a  happy  fancy." — Spectator. 

Obiter  Dicta,  Second  Series.   (i6mo,  $1.00.) 

Contents  :  Milton — Pope — ^Johnson — Burke — The  Muse 
of  History — Lamb — Emerson — The  Office  of  Literature- 
Worn  Out  Types — Cambridge  and  the  Poets — Book-buying. 

"  Neat,  apposite,  clever,  fiiU  of  quaint  allusions,  happy 
riiougbtt,  ana  apt,  un&miliar  quotations." — Boston  Advtrtittr, 

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Newman,  Matthew  Arnold,  Lamb's  Letters,  Saint-Beuve,  "Authors  in 
Court,"  Hazlitt,  "  Nationality"  and  "The  Reformation." 


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in  his  Relations  to  Women — The  Life  and  Works  of  Schiller 
— Evolution  of  tiie  German  Novel — Studies  of  the  German 
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some suggestion.  The  comparison,  always  either  implied  ot 
expressed,  is  between   France  and  the  United  States."     ' 

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THOMAS  CARLYLE. 

Lectures  on  the  History  of  Literature. 
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Copyrighted.) 

Summary  of  Contents  :  Literature  in  General — Language, 
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Works. 

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could  have  no  work  from  his  hand  which  embodies  more  clearly 
and  emphatically  his  literary  opinions  than  his  rapid  and  graphic 
survey  of  the  great  writers  and  great  literary  epochsof  the  world." 

— Dostoit  Herald, 


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"  Written  from  abundant  knowledge ;  enlivened  by  anecdoto 
and  touches  of  enthusiasm,  suggestive,  stimulating." — Botteit 
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OTHER  Essays,  Historical  and  Descriptive. 
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Short  Studies  on   Great  Subjects.     (Half 
leather,  i2mo,  4  vols.,  each  $1.50.) 
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Free  Discussion  of  Theological  Difficulties — Criticism  and  the 


SELECTED  VOLUMES  OF  ESSAYS. 

Gospel  History — The  Book  of  Job — Spinoza — The  Dissolu- 
Gospel  History — The  Bool<  of  Job — Spinoza — The  Dissolu- 
tion of  Monasteries — England's  Forgotten  Worthies — Homer 
— The  Lives  of  the  Saints — Representative  Man — Reynard 
the  Fox — The  Cat's  Pilgrimage — Fables — Parable  of  the 
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ditions and  Prospects  of  Protestantism — England  and  Her 
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Vol.  111.  Annals  of  an  English  Abbey — Revival  of 
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position, by  felicities  of  diction,  by  contagious  earnestness,  and  by 
the  rare  power  of  fusing  the  results  of  research  in  the  imagination 
^        SO  as  to  produce  a  picture  of  the  past  at  once  exact  and  vivid." 

~N.  Y.  Sun. 


WILLIAM    EWART    GLADSTONE. 

Gleanings  of  Past  Years,  1843- 1879.  (7 
vols.,  i6mo,  each  $1.00.) 

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Foreign — Vol.  V.  and  VI.,  Ecclesiastical — Vol.  Vll.,  Miscel- 
laneous. 

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most  striking  feature  is  the  breadth  of  genuine  intellectu;il  sym< 
pathy,  of  which  they  afford  such  abundant  evidence,"— AW^x*. 


SELECTED  VOLUMES  OF  ESSA  YS. 

ROBERT  GRANT. 

The  Reflections  of  a  Married  Man.  (lamo, 
doth,  $i.oo;  paper,  50  cents.) 

A  delicious  vein  of  humor  runs  through  this  new  book  by 
the  author  of  "The  Confessions  of  a  Frivolous  Girl,"  who 
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married  life  that  is  as  bright  and  entertaining  as  it  is  amusing. 
The  experiences  described  are  so  typical,  that  it  is  singular 
that  they  have  never  got  into  print  before. 

E.  J.   HARDY. 

The  Business  of  Life  :  A  Book  for  Everyone. 
— How  TO  BE  Happy  Though  Married:  Being 
a  Handbook  to  Marriage — The  Five  Talents  of 
Woman  :  A  Book  for  Girls  and  Women — 
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makes  whatiie  says  uniformly  QM.tx\3Xx\.\xiz''— Boston  Advertittr. 

W.  E.  HENLEY. 

Views  and  Reviews.  Essays  in  Appreciation : 
Literature.     (i2mo,  $1.00.) 

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Meredith  —  Byron  —  Hugo  —  Heine — Arnold  —  Rabelais  — 
Shakespeare  — Sidney — Walton  — Banville — Berlioz  — Long- 
fellow— Balzac — Hood — Lever — Congreve — Tolstoi — Field- 
ing, etc.,  etc. 

"  Interesting,  original,  keen  and  felicitous.  His  criticism  will 
be  found  suggestive,  cultivated,  independent."— M  Y.  Tribun*. 

J.  G.  HOLLAND. 

Titcomb's  Letters  to  Young  People,  Single 
AND  Married — Gold-Foil,  Hammered  from 
Popular  Proverbs — Lessons  in  Life:  A  Series 
of  Familiar  Essays — Concerning  the  Jones 
Family — Plain  Talks  on   Familiar  Subjects — 


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circles  of  the  American  people,  and  has  thus  won  his  way  to  the 
companionship  of  many  friendly  hearts." — N,  Y,  Trtbunt, 

WILLIAM    RALPH    INGE. 

Society  in  Rome  under  the  C^^sars.  (i2mo, 
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— Chicago  Herald. 

ANDREW    LANG. 

Essays  in  Little.      (Portrait,  12 mo,  $1.00.) 

Contents  :  Alexandre  Dumas — Mr.  Stevenson's  Works 
— ^Thomas  Haynes  Bayly — Theodore  de  Banville — Homer 
and  the  Study  of  Greek — The  Last  Fashionable  Novel — • 
Thackeray — Dickens — Adventures  of  Buccaneers — The  Sagas 
— Kingsley — Lever — Poems  of  Sir  Walter  Scott — Bunyan — 
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"The  book  is  one  of  the  luxuries  of  the  literary  taste.  It  is  meant 
for  the  exquisite  palate,  and  is  prepared  by  one  of  the  '  knowing  ' 
kind.     It  is  an  astonishing  little  volume."— A^,  Y,  Evening  Post. 

SIDNEY   LANIER. 

The  English  Novel  and  the  Principle  of 
ITS  Development.     (Crown  8vo,  $2.00.) 

"The  critical  and  analytical  portions  of  his  work  are  always 
in  high  key,  suggestive,  brilliant,  rather  dogmatic  and  not  free 
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— Independent, 


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The  Science  of  English  Verse.  (Crown,  8vo, 
$2.00.) 

"It  contains  much  sound  practical  advice  to  the  makers  of 
verse.  The  work  shows  extensive  reading  and  a  refined  tast* 
both  in  poetry  and  in  music." — Nation. 

BRANDER    MATTHEWS. 

French  Dramatists  of  the  19TH  Century 
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Contents  :  Chronology  —  The  Romantic  Movement  — 
Hugo  —  Dumas  —  Scribe  — Augier — Dumas  fils  — Sardou — 
Feuillet  —  Labiche  —  Meilhac  and  Halevy  —  Zola  and  the 
Tendencies  of  French  Drama — A  Ten  Years'  Retrospect : 
1881-1891. 

"  Mr.  Matthews  writes  with  authority  of  the  French  stage. 
Probably  no  other  writer  of  English  has  a  larger  acquaintance 
with  the  subject  than  he.  His  style  is  easy  and  graceful,  and  the 
book  is  delightful  reading." — N.  V.  Times. 

The  Theatres  of  Paris.  (Illustrated,  i6mo, 
$1.25.) 

"An  interesting,  gossipy,  yet  instructive  little  book." 

— Aca<Unty  (London). 

DONALD  G.  MITCHELL. 

English  Lands,  Letters  and  Kings.  Vol.  I., 
From  Celt  to  Tudor.  Vol.  11.,  From  Elizabeth 
to  Anne.     (Each,  i2mo,  $1.50.) 

"  Cri'-p,  sparkling,  delicate,  these  brief  talks  about  authors, 
great  and  small,  about  kings  and  queens,  schoolmasters  and 
people,  whet  the  taste  for  more,  tn  '  Ik  Marvel's  '  racy,  sweet, 
delightful  prose,  we  see  the  benefits  of  English  literature  assimi- 
lated."— Literary  World. 

Reveries  of  a  Bachelor  ;  or,  A  Book  of  the 
Heart — Dream  Life  :  A  Fable  of  the  Seasons. 
(Cameo  Edition,    each,   with   etching,    i6mo, 

$L25.) 

"  Beautiful  examples  of  the  art  [of  book  makmg].  The  vein 
of  sentiment  in  the  text  is  one  of  which  youth  never  tires." 

—  The  Nation. 

Seven  Stories  with  Basement  and  Attic- 
Wet  Days  at  Edgewood,  with  Old  Farmers, 
Old    Gardeners    and    Old    Pastorals — Bound 


SELECTED  VOLUMES  OF  ESSAYS. 

Together,  A  Sheaf  of  Papers — Out-of-Town 
Palaces,  with  Hints  for  their  Improvement — 
My  Farm  of  Edgewood,  A  Country  Book. 
(Each,   i2mo,  $1.25.) 

"No  American  writer  since  the  days  of  Washington  Irving 
uses  the  English  language  as  does  '  Ik  Marvel.'  His  books  are 
as  natural  as  spring  flowers,  and  as  refreshing  as  summer  rains." 

— Boston  Transcript, 

GEORGE    MOORE. 

Impressions  and  Opinions.     (i2mo,  $1.25.) 

Contents:  Balzac  —  Turgueneff — "  Le  Reve  "  —  Two 
Unknown  Poets — An  Actress  of  the  i8th  Century — Mummer 
Worship — Our  Dramatists  and  their  Literature — Note  on 
"Ghosts" — On  the  Necessity  of  a  Theatre  Libre — Meissonier 
and  the  Salon  Julian — Art  for  the  Villa — Degas,  etc.,  etc. 

"  Both  instructive  and  entertaining  .  .  .  still  more  interest- 
ing is  the  problem  of  an  English  'Ihiatre  Libre,  of  which  Mr. 
Moore  is  an  ingenious  advocate.  The  four  concluding  essays, 
which  treat  of   art  and  artists,   are   all   excellent." 

— Saturday  Review  (London). 

F.    MAX    MiJLLER. 

Chips  from  a  German  Workshop.  Vol.  I., 
Essays  on  the  Science  of  Religion — Vol.  II., 
Essays  on  Mythology,  Traditions  and  Customs 
— Vol.  III.,  Essays  on  Literature,  Biographies 
and  Antiquities — Vol.  IV.,  Comparative  Phi- 
lology, Mythology,  etc. — Vol.V.,  On  Freedom, 
etc.     (5  vols.,  each,  crown  8vo,  $2.00.) 

"These  books  afford  no  end  of  interesting  extracts  ;  '  chips '  by 
the  cord,  that  are  full  both  to  the  intellect  and  the  imagination; 
but  we  must  refer  the  curious  reader  to  the  volumes  themselves. 
He  will  find  in  them  a  body  of  combined  entertainment  and  in- 
struction such  as  has  hardly  rver  been  brought  together  in  so 
compact  a  form." — N.  V.  Evening  Post, 

Biographical  Essays.     (Crown  8vo,  $2.00.) 

Contents:  Rammoliun  Roy — Keshub  Chunder  Sen — 
Dayananda  Sarasvatt — Bunyiu  Nanjio — Kenjiu  Kasawara — 
Mohl — Kingsley. 

"  Max  Miiller  is  the  leading  authority  of  the  world  in  Hindoo 
literature,  and  his  volume  on  Oriental  reformers  will  be  acceptable 
to  scholars  and  literary  people  of  all  classes." — Chicago  Trilrunt, 


SELECTED   VOLUMES  OF  ESS  A  YS. 

THOMAS   NELSON    PAGE. 

The  Old  South,  Essays  Social  and  Political. 
(i2mo.     With  portrait,  $1.25.) 

Contents  :  The  Old  South — Authorship  in  the  South 
before  the  War — Life  in  Colonial  Virginia — Social  Life  in  the 
South  before  the  War — Old  Yorktown — The  Old  Virginia 
Lawyer — The  South's  Need  of  a  History — The  Negro 
Question. 

These  essays  reveal  a  new  and  charming  side  of  Mr. 
Page's  versatility.  He  knows  his  Virginia  as  Lowell  knew 
his  New  England. 

AUSTIN  PHELPS,  D.D. 

My  Note-Book:  Fragmentary  Studies  in 
Thieoiogy  and  Subjects  Adjacent  Thereto  ( 1 2mo, 
§1.50) — Men  and  Books;  or,  Studies  in  Homi- 
letics  (8vo,  $2.00) — My  Portfolio  ( 1 2mo,  $  i .  50) 
— My  Study,  and  Other  Essays  (i2mo,  $1.50) 

"  His  great  and  varied  learning,  his  wide  outlook,  his  prof(7>..d 
sympathy  with  concrete  men  and  women,  the  lucidity  *nd  beiuty 
of  his  style,  and  the  fertility  of  his  thought,  will  secure  for  him  a 
place  among  the  great  men  of  American  Congregationalism." 

—N,  y.  Tributu. 

NOAH    PORTER,  LL.D. 

Books  and  Reading.     (Crown  8vo,  $2.00). 

"It  is  distinguished  by  all  the  rare  acumen,  discriminating 
taste  and  extensive  literary  knowledge  of  the  author.  The  chief 
departments  of  literature  are  reviewed  in  detail." — N,  Y.  Times, 

PHILIP  SCHAFF,  D.D. 

Literature  and  Poetry.  (With  portrait, 
8vo,  $3.00.) 

Contents  :  Studies  on  the  English  Language — ^The  Poetry 
of  the  Bible — Dies  Irae — Stabat  Mater — Hymns  of  St- 
Bernard — The  University,  Ancient  and  Modern — Dante 
Alighieri,  The  Divina  Commedia. 

"  There  is  a  great  amount  of  erudition  in  the  collection,  but 
the  style  is  so  simple  and  direct  that  the  reader  does  not  reali2e 
that  he  is  following  the  travels  of  a  close  scholar  through  many 
learned  volumes  in  many  ditTcrect  languages." — Chautauquan. 


SELECTED   VOLUMES  OF  ESSA  YS, 

EDMOND  SCHERER. 

Essays  on  English  Literature.  (With 
Portrait,  i2mo,  $1.50.) 

Contents  :  George  Eliot  (three  essays)— J.  S.  Mill — 
Shakespeare — Taine's  History  of  English  Literature — Shakes- 
peare and  Criticism — Milton  and  "  Paradise  Lost " — Laurence 
Sterne,  or  the  Humorist  —  Wordsworth  —  Carlyle  — 
"  Endymion." 

"  M.  Scherer  had  a  number  of  great  qualities,  mental  and  moral 
which  rendered  him  a  critic  of  English  literature,  in  particular, 
whose  views  and  opinions  have  not  only  novelty  and  freshness, 
but  illumination  and  instruction  for  English  readers,  accustomed 
to  conventional  estimates  from  the  English  stand-point." 

— Literary  World. 

WILLIAM   G.  T.  SHEDD,  D.D. 

Literary  Essays.     (8vo,  $2.50.) 

"  They  bear  the  marks  of  the  author's  scholarship,  dignity  and 
polish  of  style,  and  profound  and  severe  convictions  of  truth  and 
righteousness  as  the  basis  of    culture    as    well  as    character." 

— Chicago  Interior, 

ROBERT   LOUIS  STEVENSON. 

Across  the  Plains,  with  Other  Essays  and 
Memories.     (i2mo,  $1.25.) 

Contents  :  Across  the  Plains  :  Leaves  from  the  Note- 
book of  an  Emigrant  between  New  York  and  San  Francisco — 
The  Old  Pacific  Capital— Fontainebleau  :  Village  Commu- 
nities of  Painters — Epilogue  to  an  Inland  Voyage — Contri- 
bution to  the  History  of  Life — Education  of  an  Engineer — ^ 
The  Lantern  Bearers — Dreams — Beggars — Letter  to  a  Young 
Man  proposing  to  Embrace  a  Literary  Life^A  Christmas 
Sermon. 

Memories  and  Portraits.     (i2mo,  $1.00.) 

Contents  :  Some  College  Memories — A  College  Magazine 
— An  Old  Scotch  Gardener — Memoirs  of  an  Islet — Thomas 
Stevenson — Talk  and  Talkers — The  Character  of  Dogs — A 
Gossip  on  a  Novel  of  Dumas — A  Gossip  on  Romance — A 
Humble  Remonstrance, 


SELECTED  VOLUMES  OF  ESS  A  VS. 

ViRGiNiBUS  PuERisQUE,  and  Other  Papers. 
(i2mo,  $i.oo.) 

Contents  :  Virginibus  Puerisque  —  Crabbed  Age  and 
Youth — An  Apology  for  Idlers— Ordered  South — Aes  Triplex 
— El  Dorado — The  English  Admirals — Some  Portraits  by 
Raeburn — Child's  Play — Walking  Tours — Pan's  Pipes— A 
Plea  for  Gas  Lamps. 

Familiar  Studies  of  Men  and  Books.  (i2mo, 
$1.25.) 

Contents  :  Victor  Hugo's  Romances — Some  Aspects  of 
Robert  Bums — Walt  Whitman — Henry  David  Thoreau — 
Yoshida-Thorajiro— Franqois  Villon — Charles  of  Orleans- 
Samuel  Pepys — John  Knox  and  Women. 

"If  there  are  among  our  readers  any  lover  of  good  books  to 
whom  Mr.  Stevenson  is  still  a  stranger,  we  may  advise  them  to 
make  his  acquaintance  through  either  of  these  collections  of  essays. 
The  papers  are  full  of  the  rare  individual  charm  which  gives  a 
distinction  to  the  lighest  products  of  his  art  and  fancy.  He  is  a 
notable  writer  of  good  English,  who  combines  in  a  manner 
altogether  his  own  the  flexibility,  freedom,  quickness  and  sug- 
gestiveness  of  contemporary  fashions  with  a  grace,  dignity,  and 
high-breeding  that  belong  rather  to  the  past." — N,  Y.  Tribune, 

HENRY  VAN   DYKE,   D.D. 

The  Poetry  of  Tennyson.  {New  and  En- 
larged Edition.     With  Portrait,    i2mo,  $2.00.) 

Contents  :  Tennyson's  First  Flight — The  Palace  of  Art  : 
Milton  and  Tennyson — Two  Splendid  Failures — The  Idylls 
of  the  King — The  Historic  Triology — The  Bible  in  Tennyson 
— Fruit  from  an  Old  Tree — On  the  Study  of  Tennyson — 
Chronology — List  of  Biblical  Quotations. 

"The  two  new  chapters  and  the  additional  chronological  matter 
have  greatly  enriched  the  work." — T.  B.  Aldrich. 

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WILL  BE  SENT  POSTPAID,  ON  RECEIPT  OF  PRICE, 
BY  THE  PUBLISHERS,  CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS. 
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